I think the key word there is compulsory - I've lived in a couple of those places and it was pretty easy to get a drivers-license level of ID document without too much trouble (and without having a drivers license of my own).
I experienced this a lot while growing up in a country with ~4 national languages - I spoke one of them well, but sadly only about 20% of the population speak it, so most websites will default to using the bigger national language (~70% pop) regardless of what your computer is set to.
It's really not that hard to find the language switcher on most websites, but it's still a bit annoying.
Yeah, it's annoying as hell. I especially despise when sites force me to manually select another country from a list, in order to get an interface in my native language.
The country selection itself is trivial, but often the content will be geo-specific as well, and you might end up with things like the wrong currency and so on.
That article is more about aesthetics than anything.
Also:
> There is a perfect symbol for any language which you can use on the Web: the name of the language in the language itself, such as English (or British English or US English, if needed). Be careful with the grammatically correct use of upper and lower case here! If a reader doesn't know the name of language X in X, he probably does not know X enough for the link to be of use to him.
So now that I'm on this Korean site, with no idea how "Korean" looks in Korean, how am I supposed to find the language picker?
He is not saying to use the current language's hame for the language picker's icon (I would use a globe, personally), but instead to use the language's name in the list.
> * “US English” is good enough for all English speakers.
>
> * US English is well defined and refers to a single language.
There are certainly pretty extreme differences in spoken language, especially in the UK with its vast collection of local dialects, or in places where English is on a continuum with a creole language (Jamaica, Liberia, etc.)
But I would have thought that any regional variety of written English could be readily easily understood by most functionally literate speakers. I can browse English-language newspapers from the US, UK, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines and understand everything or nearly so. Is my assumption incorrect?
Anyway, I'd add another falsehood to your list:
* People prefer to consume content in their native language.
I think most bilingual people would prefer to read original content in their non-dominant language than a (poorly) translated version in their native language.
If you're going to use definition of 'language' so narrow that languages effectively don't exist, your article is not going to be useful. Kinda want the falsehoods to actually be false, you know?
Pretty much, yes. But the situation is even more messed up here in Europe and I am especially happy that I'm not a native German speaker.
It would cause a bunch of other problems, of course, but it would be nice if we could just have a bunch of languages with an EU flag next to them. At least from an UI perspective. :D
Isn't that a call you make when you sign on as a contractor though? At least at my company, contractors make a boatload more money, with the provision that you don't get any of the normal benefits provided by the company.
I make less than everyone around me because all that extra money goes to my agency. This is the the main entryway for the poor man to get into a company these days. After a year or 6 months I'm eligible for becoming a real employee if the bosses feel like it and maybe then I can get health insurance too!
Ah that sounds rough! The contractors at my company aren't from agencies, they get paid more in place of getting company benefits. Didn't realise there were other kinds - Thanks for explaining!
I respect fake-it-till-you-make to some degree, but I find too much "spinning" actually hurts the ML industry (though no doubt profitable for the spin artists). Communication style straight from the ICO world.
It's awesome to see some more players in this space. I've been keenly watching out for Modern Meadow's updates as well. Looking forward to seeing what this will bring!
