Remove problematic flags from README

[toastal]

Duplicates

• I have searched the existing issues

Current behavior

Flags do not represent languages, they represent countries/nations. There's so many problematic reasons for this that it would just be better to not even start any convention. ISO 639-3 codes are acceptable, but name spelled out in its native script is always best. You could change this to the 639-2 or 639-3 codes, but please don't use flags. Related to emoji, the Unicode consortium is no longer making any new flag emojis as they are so problematic and Unicode doesn't want to play with geopolitics--and likewise neither should a code project.

Obvious current flag issues::

• Korean: spoken in both North and South Korea
• Spanish (Castilian): widely spoken throughout Latin America with far more native speakers than Spain
• French: widely spoken in parts of Africa, rivaling numbers in France, parts of Canada, etc.

Some additional resources::

• https://wplang.org/never-use-flags-language-selection/
• https://jkorpela.fi/flags.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hEDBbHuG7M (if you really prefer video)

Expected behavior

Flag images removed. Replaced with the language name in its native script (additionally with ISO language code).

As a bonus the README reads better without having to render it. Marginal bandwidth requirements to render the README and pull the Git history if the assets are removed and rewritten out.

Steps to reproduce

1. Visit the rendered README

Additional context/Screenshots

not needed

Possible Solution

Remove flag images

[spenserblack]

Thanks for making this well-researched issue! Making the plain text more readable is a big plus IMO.

There is some benefit in identifying text by country when it comes to dialects, isn't there? For example, Quebecois varies from Parisian French. Just my own personal experience, but it seems to me that codes like PT-Br (some quick Googling tells me this is called IETF) are more common.

[toastal]

Some languages have appointed standards bodies like French, but as you noted, Quebec doesn't really care ha. Others like Arabic have a standard used for the news, but each country has a dialect. The lines between dialect and language are necessarily blurry however. Sometime you have to pick a dialect and say "this is Spanish" with the assumption that other speakers will at least be able to make sense of it, even if the vocab doesn't quite match their personal dialect. Adding a country code can help it be more direct, but with English ... even selecting American or British is what? Received Pronunciation or General American English, with loads of dialects even within the borders?

I think it's best to use discretion. You can add a -{dialect} where it makes more sense or when someone has a complaint or you have staff that have a preferred dialect to indicate to readers what to expect.

I'm not a linguistics or UX expert (nor do I think there's single, universally correct solution), but I do still feel flags are the incorrect symbol for languages.

---

I was recently passing through a European airport and it was line of Indian passport holders and myself (not Indian) waiting with the UK flag to represent the language we best speak that we support. No one was English, but we came from a different countries with our own dialects where the British had formerly colonized. It wasn't a great symbol for us.

[spenserblack]

Yeah, that's a good point about standardized versions of languages. I didn't know that about Arabic!

I think it makes sense to just identify French as French, Spanish as Spanish, etc., without adding the country code. The one exception is that I've seen Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese, which seems to often be identified as Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), PT-Br or PT (Br).

But, now that I'm thinking about it a little more, I think it might be most accessible to refer to the languages in those languages. 日本語 for Japanese, Русский for Russian, etc. Do you see a problem with using this text instead of a language code?

[o2sh]

a1c2ae3

@toastal @spenserblack is this acceptable?

I used this site (https://omniglot.com/language/names.htm) to get the name of the language in the language itself.

I'm not 100% sure I picked the right one for Korean and Chinese 🤔

[spenserblack]

I'm not 100% sure I picked the right one for Korean and Chinese

#463: @symant233 would you be able to confirm? Was your contribution Simplified Chinese?

#869: @abiriadev would you also be able to confirm that the correct text was used?

In advance, thank you!

[symant233]

#463: @symant233 would you be able to confirm? Was your contribution Simplified Chinese?

@spenserblack Yes, #463 is Simplified Chinese.

The SVG file assets/flags/cn.svg from 0ec3f31 is correct.

[abiriadev]

#869: @abiriadev would you also be able to confirm that the correct text was used?

I am really sorry for replying late. (I just checked this issue as of now)

And yes, it is the correct text.

Thanks for correcting what I missed!