The use of flag icons, particularly national flags, for languages is a common practice. Such icons have long been used on tourist attraction signage, and elsewhere in the tourism space, but have found wider use in website localization where UX limitations have become apparent. [1] [2]
National flags are the most commonly used flag icons for representing languages. They are generally chosen because they either represent the language's origin (e.g. the flag of Spain used over the flag of Mexico) or the highest number of native speakers (e.g. the flag of the United States over the Flag of England).
A diagonally divided flag between two or more nation states may be used when more than one country is a major user of a language. Examples of this are the flags of the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada to indicate the English language, the flags of China and Taiwan to represent Mandarin, the flags of France, Belgium, and Canada to represent the French language, the flags of Spain and Mexico to represent the Spanish language, and the flags of Portugal and Brazil to represent the Portuguese language. [3] [4]
Some international linguistic communities have flags which encompass all the speakers of a language while avoiding the symbolism of national flags, though they are not as widely recognized. [5] Some, like the flag of Esperanto, or the Yiddish flag.
National flags can also be used to distinguish between different written standards for a single language. For example, the Flag of Taiwan is often used for Traditional Chinese and the Flag of the People's Republic of China for Simplified Chinese. [6]
Some Euronet ATMs (automated teller machines) display the Irish flag as a symbol for the English language (usually UK flag or English flag). In the media, this was speculated to be a response to Brexit, with the Republic of Ireland as one of the only two Anglophone nations left in the European Union. The Irish flag is more usually used to signify the Irish language. [7]
Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language". Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language, which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".
L. L. Zamenhof developed Esperanto in the 1870s and '80s. Unua Libro, the first print discussion of the language, appeared in 1887. The number of Esperanto speakers have increased gradually since then, without much support from governments and international organizations. Its use has, in some instances, been outlawed or otherwise suppressed.
L. L. Zamenhof was the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language.
Esperanto symbols, primarily the Esperanto flag, have seen much consistency over the time of Esperanto's existence, though a few variations in exact flag patterning and symbology exist.
This is a list of notable persons by nationality.
Esperanto vocabulary and grammatical forms derive primarily from the Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germanic languages. The language occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" constructed languages such as Interlingua, which borrow words en masse from their source languages with little internal derivation, and a priori conlangs such as Solresol, in which the words have no historical connection to other languages. In Esperanto, root words are borrowed and retain much of the form of their source language, whether the phonetic form or orthographic form. However, each root can then form dozens of derivations which may bear little resemblance to equivalent words in the source languages, such as registaro (government), which is derived from the Latinate root reg but has a morphology closer to German or Russian.
Sinophone, which means "Chinese-speaking", typically refers to an individual who speaks at least one variety of Chinese. Academic writers often use the term Sinophone in two definitions: either specifically "Chinese-speaking populations where it is a minority language, excluding mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan" or generally "Chinese-speaking areas, including where it is an official language". Many authors use the collocation Sinophone world or Chinese-speaking world to mean the Chinese-speaking world itself or the distribution of the Chinese diaspora outside of Greater China.
In linguistics, a sprachraum is a geographical region where a common first language, with dialect varieties, or group of languages is spoken.
Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, as well as an API that helps developers build browser extensions and software applications. As of January 2025, Google Translate supports 249 languages and language varieties at various levels. It served over 200 million people daily in May 2013, and over 500 million total users as of April 2016, with more than 100 billion words translated daily.
Apertium is a free/open-source rule-based machine translation platform. It is free software and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
The people of Guyana, or Guyanese, come from a wide array of backgrounds and cultures including aboriginal natives, African and Indian origins, as well as a minority of Chinese and European descendant peoples. Demographics as of 2012 are Indo-Guyanese 39.8%, Afro-Guyanese 30.1%, mixed race 19.9%, Amerindian 10.5%, other 1.5%. As a result, Guyanese do not equate their nationality with race and ethnicity, but with citizenship. Although citizens make up the majority of Guyanese, there is a substantial number of Guyanese expatriates, dual citizens and descendants living worldwide, chiefly elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
Microsoft Translator or Bing Translator is a multilingual machine translation cloud service provided by Microsoft. Microsoft Translator is a part of Microsoft Cognitive Services and integrated across multiple consumer, developer, and enterprise products, including Bing, Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Lync, Yammer, Skype Translator, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Translator apps for Windows, Windows Phone, iPhone and Apple Watch, and Android phone and Android Wear.
Speech Recognition & Synthesis, formerly known as Speech Services, is a screen reader application developed by Google for its Android operating system. It powers applications to read aloud (speak) the text on the screen, with support for many languages. Text-to-Speech may be used by apps such as Google Play Books for reading books aloud, Google Translate for reading aloud translations for the pronunciation of words, Google TalkBack, and other spoken feedback accessibility-based applications, as well as by third-party apps. Users must install voice data for each language.
English-speaking Quebecers, also known as Anglo-Quebecers, English Quebecers, or Anglophone Quebecers or simply Anglos in a Quebec context, are a linguistic minority in the Francophonic province of Quebec. According to the 2011 Canadian census, 599,225 people in Quebec declare English as a mother tongue. When asked, 834,950 people reported using English the most at home.
