This always annoys me. I land on a site that’s in a language I don’t understand (say, Dutch), and I want to switch to something else. I open the language selector and… it’s all in Dutch too. So instead of Germany/Deutchland, Romania/România, Great Britain, etc, I get Duitsland and Roemenië and Groot-Brittannië…
How does that make any sense? If I don’t speak the language, how am I supposed to know what Roemenië even is? In some situations, it could be easier to figure it out, but in some, not so much. “German” in Polish is “Niemiecki”… :|
Wouldn’t it be way more user-friendly to show the names in their native language, like Deutsch, Română, English, Polski, etc?
Is there a reason this is still a thing, or is it just bad UX that nobody bothers to fix?
Just bad UX design. Typically this should include flags or the language’s name in the language if they really did a good job.
Flags don’t represent languages and therefore shouldn’t be used to represent languages.
Typically they’re used for the counties where the language originated.
UK for English France for French Japan for Japanese Spain for Spanish Russia for Russian Portugal for Portuguese
No, typically they aren’t, and if they do it’s a bad idea. Only 4% of L1 Portuguese speakers live in Portugal. There is 4 languages in Switzerland. German originated in at least 3 countries. USisans will throw a hissy fit if they will have to click on anything but their favourite star spangled banner for their language.
It’s a mess.
I thought you were trying to convince us not to use flags
I’m not saying it’s a good idea, i just see it a lot. Maybe I’m only paying attention to this in Europe, where it’s a bit more clear-cut, rather than tracking down population data to select a template option on a website for something like a cafe menu.
And I’m not saying it never happens, a lot of bad ideas are happening all the time.
But if you think anything regarding flags, languages and countries is clear cut in Europe, it’s mainly because you aren’t paying attention.
What flag is for English? What flag is for Portuguese? What about Austria, do they got a language? What do we put under Chinese flag, Mandarin? Where do Cantonese go? Oh, what about Belarusian? There are at least three options, and two could get you in jail, choose carefully.
I’m just telling you what I’ve seen used. Typically it’s a lot of European flags for languages that originate in Europe. So UK for English, German for German, French for French, Spain for Spanish. Belarusian would be the flag of…Belarus? Not sure why that’s a challenge.
To your question about China - What should be used for Swahili? What should be used for Yarouba or Hausa or Shona or Chewa? Africa is the problem, and so the typical method for doing this is very Euro-centric.
What flag do you use for english ?
Use the UK flag if the site is in English and use the American flag if it’s in Webster English. Seems pretty evident to me.
A split combo of the two is pretty common.
English is an official language in 53 countries, and primary language in 29. You can attempt to split it, but that wouldn’t be very pleasant picture.
UK.