John Lee wrote:
How odd - I just had a similar idea. I don't think
mine goes as far as
Ronald's though; mine is just purely for aesthetic purposes. I would
suggest that in place of flags on Jens' layout, we have mosaics of
flags - miniature flags all combined together to form one giant flag.
So the "flag" for France, for example, might include the Canadian (or
Quebecian, or whatever they're called, flag) as well as the French.
There are two criteria for inclusion of a flag in the mosaic that I
can think of; either the language must be an official language of the
country, or it must be spoken by more than x percent of people in the
country.
I think you're underestimating just how many countries there are for
many languages. To take your example of French, it wouldn't only be
France and Canada: According to [[en:French language#Geographic
distribution]], French is the official language of 24 countries (France,
D.R. Congo, Canada, Madagascar, Cote d'Ivore, Cameroon, Burkina Faso,
Mali, Senegal, Belgium, Rwanda, Haita, Switzerland, Burundi, Togo,
Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Comoros,
Djibouti, Luxembourg, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mauritius, Vanuatu, and
the Seychelles), and a major language in another 3 of them (Algeria,
Tunisia, and Morocco). That's quite a mosaic of flags!
There'd also be political implications for some languages. What flags
would we use for Kurdish, for example?
I do agree that the portal is a bit drab as it is...
-Mark