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by galgalesh 1613 days ago
Yeah, just use flags and confuse the fuck out of multilingual countries. Belgium has Dutch, German and French as official languages. So what would a Belgian flag mean? What flag should I choose?

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"
2 comments
brightball 1613 days ago
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.

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kmorgh 1613 days ago
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.

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galgalesh 1613 days ago
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.

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Insanity 1613 days ago
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).
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