Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware
by brightball on Friday January 21, 2022 @02:05PM
(#30028382)
If Dutch, German and French were supported languages on the site I imagine that flags of the Netherlands, Germany and France would be representing the language selection.
As a US citizen I often visit sites that use a British flag to represent English. I don’t bristle because there’s not a US flag or question whether the US flag should also be referencing Spanish.
It’s just a detail to draw your eye that otherwise holds no importance once that is accomplished.
Except Belgian "Dutch" is called Flemish. And is different enough from the other Dutch to warrant its own i18n.
Belgium is an exceptional case but I'm sure you can find more.
As an example: "weerhouden" in Flemish means "to be included", while in Netherlands' Dutch it means "to be excluded".
Or take "poepen" which means "to have sex" or "to take a shit" depending on which country you are in.
I frequently have to ask my friends from the Netherlands to clarify something because, even though I hear which word they're using, I have no idea what they mean because the words mean something different or are just never used that way in Flemish.
Can't say I recall a moment of really being confused by the terminology used in NL vs BE. But I do agree, a Belgian flag means nothing in terms of language. The flag can be used but only as a prefix to the actual language in text (to visually filter quickly).
If I choose the flag from the Netherlands to get Dutch, I'll probably be confused by a whole bunch of terminology since the dutch of different countries differs vastly more than the English from different countries.
"People who complain about flags are nitpickers" is a perfect way to say "I grew up in a gigantic monoculture where you can drive 5 hours in any direction without encountering a different language, if you ignore the natives"