Re: about flags and languages

>
>CE Whitehead scripsit:

Sorry to get back so late
>
> > what is needed is a pictorial icon;
>
>But why?
Well if there were one, but I agree the flag is problematic
>
> > "English" (in English)  |||  "Francais" (in French)
> >
> > also would help--as the person looking for a text in a language should
> > at least be able to read the language name in that language, so this.
>
>That was Jukka Korpela's suggestion.
Right.  I was rephrasing it.  The point is to use the language of the 
speakers in question.
>
> > the U.S.
> > [which sort of still has but one],
>
>The U.S. has no official language.  Certain states have either English 
>(26),
>English and Spanish (1), or English and Hawaiian (1) as official languages;
>the remaining states (22) have no official language.

Thanks for the correction; you're right; the states had to introduce 
initiatives to make English official state by state.
I guess there is official and unofficial language policy; I was talking 
about unofficial policy
(the language on traffic signs; in Israel-falestine there are three 
languages on these always, but it's a tiny country, easy to do there; the 
language on voter information--in some states--there are states where this 
is done in several languages, on ballots; to be fair, in HRS offices
in Florida information has often been in two or three languages--Haitian 
Creole for those who read it, Spanish, and English; at least that is what I 
remember seeing there long ago during my 6-month stint getting food stamps 
and cashing them in for brownies taking the change and doing laundry, paying 
on a loan, and using it for job hunting; Florida is otherwise unofficially 
semi-monolingual but of course businesses and such use whatever language 
they choose)

but I was in a state that introduced an official English  policy amendment, 
yes.


>
> > But does this debate go here??  Or do we just look over/approve variant
> > subtags and nothing else?
>
>Umm, this is www-international, not ietf-languages.

Oops.  Sorry.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com
>
>--
>A rose by any other name                            John Cowan
>may smell as sweet,                                 
>http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>but if you called it an onion                       cowan@ccil.org
>you'd get cooks very confused.          --RMS

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Received on Saturday, 10 March 2007 17:39:02 UTC