Linguistic Flags
As languages rarely have a flag designed to represent them, it is a common but unofficial practice to use national flags to identify them. Examples of this use include:
- representing language skills of an individual, like a staff member of a company
- displaying available languages on a multilingual website or software.
Though this can be done in an uncontroversial manner in some cases, this can easily lead to some problems for certain languages:
- languages generating language dispute, such as Romanian and Moldavian which some consider two different languages; and
- languages spoken in more than one country, such as English, Arabic, French, German, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish.
In this second case, common solutions include symbolising these languages by:
- the flag of the country where the language originated
- the flag of the country having the largest number of native speakers
- a mixed flag of the both (when this is not the same)
- the flag of the country most identified with that language in a specific region (e.g. Portuguese Language: Flag of Portugal in Europe and Flag of Brazil in South America)
Thus, on the Internet, it is most common to see the English language associated to the flag of the United Kingdom, but sometimes to the flag of England, the flag of the United States or a US-UK mixed flag, usually divided diagonally.
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Famous quotes containing the words linguistic and/or flags:
“It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say “that is red” instead of “that reddens,” either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Gentlemen, those confederate flags and our national standard are what has made this union great. In what other country could a man who fought against you be permitted to serve as judge over you, be permitted to run for reelection and bespeak your suffrage on Tuesday next at the poles.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)