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Comment by untech | Hacker News Reader

Why using $ symbol to represent English is less correct than using the US flag?

(Re: colors: see my suggestion to use these colorful icons to represent time zones)

If you differentiate between different types of english, it makes sense to show a US flag or UK flag for the different regional variations.

If you have only one version per language, just show the flags side by side. UK/US/AU/NZ for english, DE/AT/CH for German, etc.

On the other hand € stands for 20+ languages and $ means USD, NZD, CAD, many kinds of Peso and many other types of dollar.

Not to mention that many currencies don't have symbols at all.

Well, how many languages have flags? There are thousands of languages, but hundreds of countries. Surely, some languages would be left without a flag?

And this doesn’t affect just some "obscure" languages. For instance, what flag would you use for Arabic, an official UN language? What language does a flag of India, most populous language stand for?

Flags don't have to be for countries, nor does there have to be a 1:1 relationship between language and flag.

How many flags would you use for English? If you want to use flags of the most populous countries where English is the primary language, the second country after the US is Nigeria (182 m people).

How many flags would you use for Spanish? French?

Because about two dozen countries use $ as their currency symbol and another half dozen or so $ with another letter or two and not all of them have English as an official language (or an only technically not official language like the us).

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