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Re:Design of This Website (2021) by ManuelKiessling on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @06:14AM (#30930366)
I get it, but - what's the solution? At least the flags, while being offensive to some, are generally understood as a "signal for language".
Re:Design of This Website (2021) by enriquto on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @06:42AM (#30930543)
None of the major sites that deal with languages (wikipedia, google translate, deepl) ever use flags to represent languages.

In the case of your website, however, I don't see why you need to specify the language of each entry. Is it a sort of "warning" for non-english entries? It seems unnecessary. And why aren't entries in English marked with the flag of the USA? (or Canada, or South Africa).

Re:Design of This Website (2021) by chanc3e on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @06:37AM (#30930514)
This feels a little nitpicky to me - as a short hand for language and currency flags are commonplace. But I understand the thinking: "a language is nothing but a dialect with a flag"

The alternative is to use ISO (En, De, Es) in brackets before the text begins. i.e. [DE] Wie Studien verdreht werden

Re:Design of This Website (2021) by extra88 on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @08:18AM (#30931183)
Flags for currency mostly work because nations choose their flag and choose their currency. Flags for languages doesn't work because it's common for the same language to be popular in different countries and for multiple languages to be popular within a single country.

ISO language abbreviations would be a better alternative than the flags but I don't think anything is needed at all; anyone who knows German will recognize the post titles written in German and anyone who doesn't know it will still recognize that they're not in English.

The links do have `hreflang="de"` which in theory can programmatically indicate the language used at the destination, I'm not sure there's any technology that takes advantage of that. They could use a ::before pseudo-element with content: attributes(hreflang) to display the ISO code instead of the flag images. I would like to see `lang="de"` attributes on the German headings and paragraphs on the home page, they would tell screen readers to switch to a voice appropriate for the language when read aloud.

Re:Design of This Website (2021) by enriquto on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @08:25AM (#30931249)
> Flags for currency mostly work

Do you think so?

Which flag would you use for euros? Obviously not the european union flag, since there are many countries inside the EU with a different currency (like Sweden or Poland) and even countries outside the EU whose currency is the euro (Montenegro, Kosovo, Andorra, ...).

Re:Design of This Website (2021) by extra88 on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @08:37AM (#30931315)
Yeah, you're right. I did think EU membership was more aligned with use of the Euro (I only knew about the UK using the Pound but they're out). It's still true that each country chooses its currency but it would be just as weird to pick one country in the EU to represent Euros as picking one country to represent a language.
Re:Design of This Website (2021) by galaxyLogic on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @10:35AM (#30932421)
Same goes for Spanish. Which country's flag should represent it? Most people probably don't even know the flag of Spain and readers in Latin America might be offended.

I think the fact is that languages simply don't have visual symbols for them. They are spoken or written, not "looked at". Languages are linear, not 2-dimensional. Euros and Dollars have their symbol because that's what is printed on the 2D surface of bills.

Re:Design of This Website (2021) by soledades on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @06:42PM (#30938372)
I ...don't think that's actually a dealbreaker.

If the context is currencies, everyone would know that a european union flag refers to the euro.

it's a visual cue, not a translation into hieroglyphics.

Re:Design of This Website (2021) by samatman on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @08:11AM (#30931143)
I would suggest doing what Wikipedia does: print the name of the language, in the language. So Deutsch for German, 日本語 for Japanese, and so on.

If you need a corresponding URI fragment, the ISO language codes exist for that reason.