Language menus with flags (reduced space)...

This is a follow-up to the previous shot.
So, some people have told me "What if I don't have space to put a proper language menu with full text? Can I use flags then to save space?"

Well, the answer would still be "no".

In case of a reduced space, it's better to use a 2 letter language code, as defined by ISO 639.

Please! do not confuse ISO 639, for languages, with ISO 3166, for countries (which is the one used for Top Level Domain Names).

The correct ISO code for Japanese is "ja", not "jp". Same with Chinese, the correct ISO code is "zh", not "cn".

Chinese and Japanese, as well as Korean, are very particular languages, as the characters used to name those languages takes really little space, so you could still use the full name of the languages ("中文" - Zhongwen, or written Chinese language, "日本語" - Nihongo for Japanese, and "한국어" - Hangugeo, the name given to Korean language in South Korea).

Posted on Feb 15, 2014

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