Distinguishing Greek and Greek

[L.Gillam]

15 April 2005 20:34, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:

> Please ... I just wonder how a person speaking a non written 
> language can 
> identified its script and its name written in that script.

A spoken-only (non-written) language has no script. To identify a name
in a script would, I think, entail making use of a written language of 
some form. An unavoidable difficulty, one would suggest, even in your 
multilingual internet.

> >I think the "country flag" problem has been identified previously.
> 
> Flags are of interest only when a country has a national 
> language and one 
> wants to indicate that language in that country. This is one 
> of the form of 
> icon. But this is the same problem as the langtag: this is 
> the same as the 
> current bundled set of information (language+country). If you 
> use the name 
> of the language and the script, it is the same as a "en-Latn" 
> langtag. That 
> icon plus a flag would be like the en-Latn-UK langtag. etc.

Here you would require a system to support image processing also in order to
analyse the image file containing the flag to ensure people are exchanging
data accurately. You have have to hope that the colour composition in each
image was good enough to distinguish between all those tricolours, crosses,  
etc. - or do you suggest something like fr-[french_flag.jpg]. You already 
identify a limitation to the coverage of such a system - how many countries 
have "official" languages? Canada has 2, so the Canadian flag at minimum 
would give you an ambiguity. And though you might use a UK flag, English is 
not such an "official" language, and the construct would be en-Latn-GB.
And that's before we get into politically sensitive issues of flag use.