﻿ Why flags should not be used to indicate language choice

Why flags should not be used to indicate language choice

Many websites still incorrectly use country flags as symbols of language. For example, on a German tourism website offering English, French, Spanish and Japanese content, you might find something like this:

This may look nice, but it is a bad practice that should be avoided, since flags always stand for countries, not for languages! Many languages are spoken in more than one country. If you choose a country flag to represent a given language, many users from other countries in which the same language is spoken will be annoyed or — even worse — they might feel insulted!

Consider these examples: Another reason why flags should be avoided is that they are often "politically charged". If a user dislikes the country a certain flag stands for, his appreciation of the whole website might suffer.

A good alternative to flags: Use the name of the language, written in the language itself: English, Español, Português... If there are only a small number of languages, the language names can be written next to each other. For a large number of languages, a drop-down list can be used. For great examples, see the websites of YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook.

External links

Flag as a symbol of language — stupidity or insult?: A very detailed article about the problem by Jukka Korpela.

You Should Never Use Flags For Language Choice by Janko Jovanovic.

Indicating language choice: flags, text, both, neither? on 456 Berea Street.

Internationalization Best Practices, World Wide Web Consortium.

European Culturally Specific ICT Requirements (pdf), European Committee for Standardization.

Flags and languages don’t mix: Short article by web globalization expert John Yunker.

Last edit: January 2009, www.btitze.net → Languages