Comment by dotancohen
3 days ago
It works to a first approximation.
Of the five languages I have configured in KDE, three of them are country-specific. So I use the flag indicator, which is far quicker for me to locate and identify out of the corner of my eye than would be a text label (which would require using the retina and thus more time and attention).
Sure, fine for personal uses. I mean broadly and generally.
As for English, the United States has far and away the largest number of native English speakers.
Not that I think the stars and stripes has any more right to represent “English” as a concept any more than the Union Jack. If you’re going on origin, why not the flag of England instead?
I actually really like that idea. The US and UK flags seem to represent more culture than language.
I mostly meant that facetiously as now we're entering the linguistic quagmire of trying to pin down an exact origin for a language, and furthermore (depending on your chosen definition of "English") the language itself predates the current flag of England, so even that is open to debate regarding its appropriateness.
The moral is: don't try to draw boxes around languages.
All that said, I do understand why someone would want to use flags as shorthand for language. It's wrong, but it's useful.