[peterhi]

But the flag was useful to show in the ui where the language setting was. This is especially useful when the language has been set to something I cannot read. I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. Also flags in the menu means that I can find English easier than 英语

[quadhome]

Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. What flag would you expect to see?

As for finding the language in the menu, listening a language in the foreign language seems like bad design too. The menu should list “English” as an option!

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages

[mik1998]

I personally had no idea that icon let you change the language of articles (a concept I explicitly looked for before). Still confused at what the icon is actually supposed to mean.

[derefr]

Wikipedia's UI has perhaps been over-optimized over time, by people already too familiar with said UI, and so has lost the natural context cues for learnability. (Similar to what happened to modern smartphone UIs re: secondary-interaction gestures.)

Here's how the same chooser looks on Wiktionary — which is also how it used to look on Wikipedia, back when Wikipedia used the full default MediaWiki sidebar: https://oshi.at/HhVH/zhWZ.png

You've got a subsection header "In other languages"; and under it, a list of links titled with the names of languages. (This reads as: these are a set of popular suggested alternative language views of this page, and clicking these links will take you directly to the page in those languages.) And at the end of this list, aligned as the final list item, there's a button with a weird icon with the text "51 more" on it. (And this reads as: clicking here will expand some flyout menu or modal, which will allow you to see you the rest of the list of language options, and perhaps search within them.)

In that context, you don't really have to understand the meaning of the icon to know what to do; rather, the interaction of changing language is directed by the rest of the design, and going through it teaches you the meaning of the icon. Which allows you to later understand its use elsewhere in the site's design.

[sedansesame]

The popular reason is likely because 文 is used across East Asia in Chinese and Japanese (Korean and Vietnamese too, though written differently)[0], with the ideograph standing in as a sufficiently different contrast to the Latin alphabet, and as a reference to a major non-latin-alphabet based user market, while being simple enough to render (compared to something more "difficult"[1] like 语/語)

It's also been used in the Google Translate logo as well.

---

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87

[1] Not only because of Simplified/Traditional/Japanese renderings (文 is mostly the same across all three), but more strokes for a small icon is a bad idea regardless

[bradrn]

It’s a Chinese character and a Latin letter. The idea, presumably, being that of ‘multiple languages’.

[nkrisc]

But I don’t know Chinese so I don’t know that is an arbitrary Chinese character with the Latin A for contrast. I’ve seen languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet occasionally intersperse Latin letters before so until I was told just now I assumed that this Chinese character with A had some significance in Chinese.

So I don’t think it’s very effective at that.

[a_random_canuck]

Really? When I first saw it I understood it must have to do with changing languages.

[nkrisc]

Never struck me that way, though I can see it in retrospect. On the other hand, if I see a flag, I know that’s language settings.

In don’t know that using flags for language settings is more semantic, but it’s convention so I know what it means.

I’ve seen flags used to indicate language settings for as long as I’ve been using computers.

[epage]

Visiting the Netherlands right now and every time I visit local.google.com, it reverts back to Dutch. I had no idea what the symbol on its own and only figured it out when searching how to get things back to English and seeing the symbol used in that specific context.

[willcipriano]

I thought it was a weird logo or something, no idea it was even a button.

[mik1998]

I recall thinking it was a compass before. They should've chosen a more complicated Chinese character if that is what they wanted to portray.

[david_allison]

* Use 文Ａ, and ensure you can navigate to the menu only via symbols

* The first element should be "use default/system language"

* Language names should be displayed untranslated: "Deutsch, English, français"

* Optionally display the language in the currently selected language

[thaumasiotes]

> Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag.

It's not exactly suggestive of a language selector. 文 means "text". "A" doesn't mean anything at all.

[eloisius]

At least to a Chinese reader it’s immediately obvious. 文 is the suffix to all written languages. 中文 英文 法文 西班牙文 etc.

[Jensson]

Most people aren't Chinese readers.

[WirelessGigabit]

The 文 also appears in the Google Translate icon on iOS [0], which is why I always attributed it to a machine translation, not a version of the article written in another language by a human.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506

[nitwit005]

Salesforce translates (or did when I last used it) all the language and time zone options. If you switched to Japanese by accident, switching back was a bit of a challenge.

[jimbobthrowawy]

I have also seen this icon on google translate, used to denote text. I wonder who came up with it first. Any time I've seen it, I have immediately guessed what it meant.

[Nullabillity]

The flag representing the currently active language, typically.

[ReleaseCandidat]

Both versions is the correct answer, like in the screenshot in the article.

[quadhome]

Yes! I meant to write “only” in the foreign language. Good catch.

[mam2]

this is one of the most horrible design. there's at least 10 times where I had to look more than once to actually find this button

[ReleaseCandidat]

> I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English.

That's why the languages should be presented in their "own" native form (name and alphabet), at least additionally. Which - using the native form and the translation in the current active locale - Apple does, btw., so at least on MacOS your problem does not exist.

[greenish_shores]

The should be presented mainly, mostly and primarily in their native form. The form for currently set language should be additional. It's a no-brainer which makes demand for using flags unnecessary, almost making it absurd to use them.

But, wait. 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device". So the problem here is a bit different, right?

[marcosdumay]

> So the problem here is a bit different, right?

I wonder if flags fix that one in any way.

It's the convention on sites to put the flags as a top-level element (but you could put "English" there just as easily). But on any device with a menu, the flags are usually only on the language list.

[thaumasiotes]

> but you could put "English" there just as easily

I've seen a website where the URL made it clear that the selected language was "en-US", but the flag displayed was the United Kingdom.

[ReleaseCandidat]

Exactly, that's also how Apple (I'm starting to feel bad to constantly mention them) does it, the native form is "normal font face", the translated one is in lighter grey.

[mintplant]

The problem being posed by 'peterhi is not identifying a particular language in a language selection list. The problem is finding your way over to that language selection list in the first place when presented with a UI in a language you can't read. Imagine you land on a website with the language set to (say) Esperanto, how do you navigate through that to change the language to (say) English?

[thaumasiotes]

> 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device".

That's the weird part. Obviously, either one will set the language back to English.

[huygens6363]

Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software. That is an easy, universal UI pattern.

I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.

[lolinder]

> some notion of offense or other type of PCness

As just one example of what we're talking about, let's take Ireland: after generations of cultural oppression England caused a famine in Ireland that reduced the population by at least 20% between millions of deaths and millions of immigrants. Ireland still hasn't recovered its population to the pre-famine levels.

The Irish are literally still recovering from their abuse at the hands of England. They speak English because England made it so through generations of deliberate cultural extermination. It's unreasonable for you to dismiss their desire to not identify themselves with the British flag as some "type of PCness".

[lukeschlather]

It's possible to just do "English" but sites are typically going to either do British English or US English. Not putting the British flag to avoid offense is just hiding the fact that you're localizing to British English to try and avoid offense. (Which doesn't actually seem better to me.) Unless you actually do separately localize to Irish English. But also why not just provide the same text under two flags?

Also, on the other hand, China may get very cross with you if you refer to Taiwanese Chinese at all. How you refer to a language is inherently political, and hiding the flag changes the political statement you're making, but it doesn't eliminate it, nor does making a consistent decision like "no flag" mean you're going to consistently side with oppressor or oppressed.

This is all "types of PCness" and I don't say that to dismiss it or say that I would never do something for the sake of PCness, but mostly to say that throwing out flags seems like a cop-out and not addressing the problems on a case-by-case basis.

The bigger problems are probably countries with indigenous native languages that only exist in that country but are also a minority... many Latin American countries where you might put Spanish with that country's flag but there is Nahuatl or Quechua or whatever. But on the other hand realistically you are only localizing to Spanish, so again, you're just trying to pretend like you've made a neutral political choice by hiding the flag.

[huygens6363]

Well, good sir, you actually got through my thick skull. I have a soft spot for the Irish. I understand.

[throwaway22032]

At some point you just have to own the fact that you are who you are because of your history. An Irish dialect of English is still English and it still has that connection to the past, flag or no flag.

[ianburrell]

More importantly, Ireland speaks two languages, English and Irish. The Irish flag should probably be Irish language since English has other representations. But it isn't obvious.

[wongarsu]

Typically the flag of the current language setting

[lolinder]

At which point you've now assigned flags to languages, with all of the problems that entails.

[Ekaros]

Hmm, there are counter example Japanese flag on white background would signify nothing...

[huygens6363]

That’s a design issue and a small and easily fixable one at that.

[metafunctor]

A commonly used icon or symbol for language selection seems to be the globe symbol (U+1F310). HN seems to filter it away, though, so cannot use it in this comment.

[siva7]

You solve this by displaying the language in its original writing. So it's not swiss but Schwitzerisch!

[sparky_z]

That doesn't help you figure out where to go to change the setting, unless you want to list all the available language options at the top of every single page.