Most times when multiple languages are presented in print, the languages are represented by a country’s flag. Annoyingly, English is always symbolized by a British flag, even in situations where it’s more likely that most readers are American (England: English. It “goes”. Whatever). But I just looked up at my 2001 Italian & English Idioms book, which has the title in both English and Italian. In the Italian title, the “2001” is colored with red, white, and green stripes - the Italian flag, no surprise there. But the English “2001” is colored with what? Not a Union Jack symbol, but a red & white striped 2 and 1 and two star-spangled blue 0’s. That’s right. Somebody’s finally realized what the major English-speaking country of the world is.
Or maybe it’s that not everyone has figured out where English comes from yet.
Or maybe it’s that not everyone has figured out where English comes from yet.
Ya know, like England = English?
I always thought of those little flag representing which country the language originally came from - not who’s the biggest/most powerful/most frooglistic country speaking English. Same with the little Spanish flags - I understand they speak Spainish in South America too…
Can’t say I’ve ever noticed a Union Jack representing “English” - perhaps it’s a European thing?
Could be worse. I grew up in Illinois, where the legally mandated offical language of that state was American. Not English.
You’re going to need to provide a stronger argument than your own opinion to convince me that “English is always symbolized by a British flag”. That gibberish in parentheses certainly isn’t English anyhow.
Well, just look what happened to the British Empire…
Besides, the English use the metric system now. So perhaps they just gave up the title “English” to the Americans…
What is the relevance of that comment?
That’s not correct, we use a variety of units of measurement.
Well, you know…the empire…the little flag over the english sections…a good curry…it all fits. I’m not sure where, but it all fits.
Maybe there’s still hope for the German speaking Austrians,
Portugese speaking Brazilians,
etc. etc. etc.
If I ever see a red maple leaf flag icon, I’ll have to assume the language is English.
If the really wanna screw with people, the can use the Swiss red cross for French, Italian & German.
It has apparently escaped your notice that your own people refer to their language as “English”… you can’t very well expect the rest of the world to credit America with English if America won’t credit itself.
In any case, dear, there are more English speakers in both India and China than in the United States.
If anything, the real travesty is that the Union Jack is used rather than St. George’s Cross (the English flag, for you non-Brits: a red cross on a white background). After all, you wouldn’t use it for a Welsh dictionary.
Dutchboy, if you define English speaker as being able to say hello and bye bye, then you would be correct about China. However, the Chinese by and large do not speak English with any level of fluency. Certainly there are not 200 million Chinese that speak English at a “reasonable” level.
Of course, how do you define “English speaker?”
In China, very few people speak English more than “Hi!” or “Thankyouverymuch”(said by money-grabbing bathroom attendants).
I’ve neve been to India, but you may be right about that one. On China though, you are totally ignorant.
I think I’ll have a minor nitpick now:
The Welsh flag isn’t a component of the Union flag.
It has a St George’s cross for England, a St Andrews cross, or saltire for Scotland and the cross of St Patrick, for us, here in Ireland.
So the Union flag (Tangent - Isn’t it only properly called Union Jack when it is on a ship?) doesn’t stand for any kind of a union at all, at least not now. It can’t really be changed though, not at this late stage.
:smack: Do we have to go through this again so soon?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=204724
English did not originate from England. It originated from Britain.
It stands for the union of the crowns, not the countries. As the Welsh crown was already conquered rather than unified when the flag was first designed, their flag can hardly be included, can it?
Harsh, but that’s the way it works.
Only because I haven’t posted this link in a while:
Gosh, I was…somewhere…at some museum in…um, maybe Italy? Or France? Anyway. Actually, it might have been at Westminster Abbey, now that I think of it, they had little informational pamphlets in various languages with the flag inscriptions. Some of them had the British flag and some had the American flag. I was pretty amused. I guess the idea was that someone would look instinctively for their own nation’s flag and maybe not even notice that they had identical (I checked) pamphlets with two different flags. If they had the exact same pamphlets with Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander flags, I didn’t notice.
Gee, there I was thinking English came for ENGLAND. sighs
Well now you know better. Glad to be of service. Fighting Ignorance is our aim.