Why not use full language names?
I am very tired of seeing one flag represent my language where that is the newer nation using that language as national language. But that language is spoken for a thousand years or more in other regions.
I'm not disagreeing with your general point, but I'm curious: What language is over a thousand years old and still recognizably the same language?
Although in fairness, it does now come down to a semantic argument about what counts as the same language, and I acknowledge that a reasonable person could disagree with my narrower view.
I really enjoy Jamaican patois for this. Arriving there, try as hard as I could...I couldn't understand a single word of it, even though it was ostensibly "English-enough" that I should have been able to. The first 5 days spending time in groups speaking the local language felt like anywhere else that I couldn't understand -- Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Guatemala, etc.
Right around the one week mark, something just 'clicked' and I could understand pretty much all of it as if it were regular English except for the true slang. Really felt like "dialect" on the cusp of become "language". Very cool spot for a language.
This is...difficult to read, but once you realize that þ == th, it's semi comprehensible. Looking up some Middle English on Youtube, it's also semi comprehensible. I doubt I could have a deep philosophical conversation with an ME speaker, I think we could make eachother understood.
Latin.
If I end up on the page in a language I don't know, then how would I find the language selector?
I agree that flags aren't great, but I don't know of any other solution to this problem.
And language codes should be given in ASCII. Someone not native has a slight chance of not knowing what fr is, or bn is, or nl is, but, a native, or someone who speaks the language will always know.