In the language drop-down box, can the flag next to 'English' be the UK flag?

Question

Now, I love America probably more than most British people, but 'English' should not have the American flag next to it. If it has any flag, it should be the British one. I have nothing against Americans or the American flag, but the British flag should be used next to the word 'English'.

Answer 1

Just checked project-gc this morning and there is a new Language option English, United Kingdom :)

Comments

Good call. It's been one of those little things that's niggled me, though not enoigh to comment about.

Now I wonder if we can persuade Groundspeak that not everyone uses the mm/dd/yyyy date format...

---

Correct. As of now, there is no difference between the US and UK versions of English, but I hope that changes as the translators notice that there are indeed two different versions to tinker with.

---

Account settings -> Preferences -> Date Format...

Answer 2

As english is not my mother tongue I read these posts with amusement...

There are a lot more countries with english as first language. We mustn't forget Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on... 

But kidding aside: On many webpages I have seen a mixed british/american flag for choosing the english language, like this one:

http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/nTE/EqK/nTEEqK88c.png

Maybe this could be an reasonable compromise?

Answer 3

Here here.  I'm in complete agreement!

Answer 4

Did the 'English (United Kingdom)' option disappear from the menu? It doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Comments

As the last answer from ganja1447: "Paperballpark: When we did research about the fact if sites used US or GB flag, we found it to be about 50/50, on the sites we checked. Then there is the fact that the locale is en_US on Project-GC.com, with spellings being the US variants (color vs colour for example)."

---

Yes, but as per the answer from !RedStag, they did actually add an 'English (United Kingdom)' option to the menu. Now it appears to have disappeared again, which I suspect is a bug, because the other English option still has 'United States' after it.

---

Agreed - I still have the Union Flag flying in my top left corner, but it isn't listed in the drop down list.

Answer 5

Changing that would only mean that someone else would request the opposite change, as long as we don't keep separate translations for US English and UK English (which we don't). Offhand I can't tell which spelling version we use officially. Actually I don't think there's any official word on that. After a (very) brief search found I found examples of US spelling but none of UK spelling.

The language of the UK is "English". The language of the US is, however, *also* "English". The US has roughly five times as many native speakers of English as the UK does, though, and is the origin country of geocaching to boot.

Also, if the argument is that "English" is from England, then the appropriate flag would be the English flag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_England#/media/File:Flag_of_England.svg), right, not the conglomerate union flag?

As for "English is from England", that is something of a stretch to say the least. The original language of the British isles is various Celtic dialects. The Anglo-Saxons (Germans, more or less) brought a different language with them when they settled in Anglia. After this, hordes of vikings (my ancestors) invaded Britain and created the Danelaw and brought with them a whole new set of words that got incorpprated into Old English. Meanwhile, on the other side of the English channel other vikings settled in Normandy ("the land of the northern men") and a couple of hundred years later they also decided to invade Britain led by William the Conqueror and then brought yet another slew of new words into Middle English from French. After that Britain turned into a major colonial empire and pillaged words from just about any language on the globe. So actually I'd say that English is from a lot of places but none of them is really England; that is merely the place where lots of other languages were mixed together to create English.

tl;dr: No.

Comments

I'm sorry to say that I feel your answer is pedantic at best, patronising at worst. Almost every website that has language options illustrates 'English' with the British (Union) flag.

Your argument that America has more English speakers than Britain is a valid one, except that Project-GC seems to use the Spanish flag for 'Spanish', rather than the Mexican one (Mexico has almost 3 times as many Spanish speakers than Spain)

As for your brief history lesson (which I don't need), you might as well say that all dialects originated elsewhere, and use different flags for them too. If 'English' didn't originate in England, then it sure as hell didn't originate in America, so why not use the Viking flag, given that you seem to want to claim the language for your ancestors? I am, of course, joking, but I do so to make the point that your history lesson has little to do with my initial question.

If the site wants to use the 'English' flag to illustrate 'English' language, I would have no real problem with that, although it'd be a bit like using the Andalucian flag for 'Spanish'.

Alternatively, you could simply rename 'English' as 'US English' and still use the American flag, which, although not ideal, would at least be geographically correct.


tl;dr: please stop being so patronising and answer my question properly. If you can't, let someone else do so instead.

---

Well, perhaps my answer shouldn't be taken entirely seriously either. But still: this is to all intents and purposes a non-issue.

---

If we are being picky and argumentative (it's lunchtime so its allowed?) then being English I'd loudly argue that geocaching in fact started in England as letter boxing in 1854. Adding GPS coordinates rather than using grid references and/or lists of directions only being a minor modification to the original game.

---

Did letterboxing originally have anything but lists of directions (which, I assume, is more of "did maps then have grid references?")?

"I could be arguing in my spare time." ;)

---

When I was doing it as a kid in the early 90s (no not 1890s) they often used the combination of both grid references and directions (typically start at this grid reference, follow the path north 100 places and look at the tree on the left).
Looking here http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=50.5763&lon=-3.8111&layers=171 and here https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/resources/maps-and-geographic-resources/the-national-grid.html I think the answer to your question is no grid references didn't exist then - but all they are is a particular type of direction.

---

Paperballpark: When we did research about the fact if sites used US or GB flag, we found it to be about 50/50, on the sites we checked.

Then there is the fact that the locale is en_US on Project-GC.com, with spellings being the US variants (color vs colour for example).