Re: Official ISO 3166 country codes online

From: Alain LaBonté  (alb@sct.gouv.qc.ca)
Date: Tue Nov 30 1999 - 16:41:14 EST


À 12:43 99-11-30 -0800, Tony Harminc a écrit :
>On 30 Nov 99, at 15:02, mg wrote:

[anonymous]
>> > I find it amusing that the ISO-3166 official web page has a little
>> > two-tone-blue & white British flag, with the tag "coming soon:
>> > english version".

[mg]
>> The website of Viennese Tourist Board has found a culturally creative
>> solution -- it shows two little hybrid icons (half the German flag,
half the
>> Austrian flag to indicate the German version; half the Union flag, half the
>> US flag to indicate the English version).
>> mg

[Tony]
>It may be creative, but it's still broken. It'll be culturally
>sensitive when they manage to get the Australian, Canadian, New
>Zealand, Irish, and a dozen or so other flags all equally represented
>in one logo. But it'll still be broken - how should one look for
>French - under a Canadian or a Swiss flag ? I can't comprehend why
>people persist in this annoying nonsense. Why should I be expected
>to look for the flag of some foreign country to find my native
>language ?

[Alain] I could not agree more. For French, you would need a pie of 50
flag/portions. This is nonsense (at least, exceptionally for this one, the
flag of Francophonie -- a kind of cultural [not really economical]
commonwealth -- could be used, but this would not be the case for most
languages). Furthermore in a country, many languages are typically spoken
(in Canada probably 50, 3 official languages plus many tens of native
languages). Representing a language by a flag is offensive (particularly in
Québec and, after all, all of Canada, where the flag issue is very
sensitive!!!!!!) but, worse, it denotes a total lack of linguistic
awareness of what the world is, culturally.

Alain LaBonté
Québec



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