1e4e6 wrote:It sounds interesting, but what to do about countries that are officially bilingual, trilingual, etc.? Hovering might be cumbersome for each language, especially if it has a bunch of multilingual countries, i.e.
Canada (English, French)
Belgium (French, Dutch/Flemish)
Luxembourg (French, German, Luxembourgish)
Switzerland (German, French, Italian, Romansch)
Singapore (English, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil)
Republic of Ireland (Irish, English)
Perú (Spanish, Quechua, Aymara)
South Africa (too many to list: 11 languages or so)
I was thinking also, how to deal with those who do not feel that their language is part of the country? The first one that came to mind was Catalan. Would it be the Catalan flag with the 4 red stripes on yellow shield instead of the Spanish flag? And those who speak a mix of 2 versions, like British + Australian English instead of a pure form of either. Would Scottish English speakers who cannot speak Scottish get the Scottish flag instead of the Union Flag?
I have a friend who grew up in the Anglophone world but who has no real native language, according to him, because he speaks a mix of Shanghainese with Mandarin that apparently no one except his immediate family understands, although he can switch to standard Mandarin if necessary.
Not to complicate things, I think that it could be a good idea, but there are some other factors that need to be taken into account.
Yes the flags system is complicated,
Belgium has 3 national languages not 2:
French
Dutch (Flemish)
German
and also some others like Walloon, Picard etc
My native language is Belgian French, therefore I wouldn't want to put the French flag, but with the Belgian one, it wouldn't be possible to know Fr, NL or De.
how about the Swiss people or Chinese or Indian etc?