I saw this post and wondered, why do British constituent countries get so much special treatment over German constituent countries or Spanish autonomous communities for example? Cause they don’t seem to even have particularly greater autonomy than some of those

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  2. Germany unified by choice because they were all culturally and ethnically german (simplification I know)

    NI, Scotland and Wales were culturally and ethnically different from England but we’re subjugated or coerced into unification and have large (in Scotland and NI anyway) separatist movements that Westminster placates. (Again very simplified)

  4. If you make a union between countries where they are still recognized as separate countries, it’s not the same as having one country consisting of many separate administrative regions.

    German constituent counties are not countries. Spanish style autonomous regions are not countries.

    It’s not special treatment, it’s how countries are treated.
    Does Great Britain take away enough autonomy from the members of its union that it can be argued whether or not they are really separate countries any more? Possibly, but that’s a separate argument from why countries are treated differently than parts of countries are.

  5. Special regims? Idk.

    French republic has most of the overseas flags 🇵🇲🇾🇹🇬🇫🇼🇫🇹🇫🇳🇨🇬🇵🇧🇱🇵🇫… Some are overseas region/departments, other are overseas countries/territories Can’t find some tho, like La Réunion.

    No Corsica either 🙁 Having a local parliament isn’t the main argument apparently.

    Why the f do we get Kerguelen islands flag 🇹🇫🇹🇫🇹🇫🇹🇫🇹🇫 but no Corsica?
    I need my BZH also. F the penguins, long live the Bretons

  6. England, Scotland, Wales and NI are within a union of countries. I guess similarly to how Austria-Hungary was split between Austria and Hungary(but to a lesser extent).

    The EU is also a union of countires tho unlike the UK, member countries still mostly have separate foreign affairs and military

  8. I doubt anyone can distinguish emojis of deep blue banners with small coat of arms which happened to be 30-ish official US states flags

  9. The US and germany are federal states an its constituent states are not countries.

    Also, there is so much more of them. 16 and 51 (?).

    In spain, they done even have official stazes as subdividions iirc.

  10. Doesn’t Germany have states?

    I think UK official sites calls them countries within countries and they even participate as countries in some things like football , so it makes sense that they have flag emojis etc. It’s not about sovereignty.

  11. I assume, because Great Britain can be better compared to the EU than any individual country in Europe, so in that sense, it makes perfect sense that the various “members” of Great Britain have their own flag emojis.

    You could make a case for US states to each have their individual emojis following that logic, though.

  15. The constituent countries flags are also regularly represented at international sports events such as the football and rugby world cups. Makes sense if they are competing to be able to use them in chat?

  17. Sport is essentially their pablum. They delude themselves into thinking that they are countries because they have their own national teams, which exist only because the UK influenced the governing organizations when they were formed. In no other way are they different than the other examples.

  19. As much as I don’t like to agree with Americans, if the UK can have emojis of its ~~regions~~ countries flags then we should have US states flags.

  21. If you’re alluding to the split between them in sport, it’s a quirk of history.

    Emojis I can’t answer for but probably just follows the example set by sport.

  22. Special treatment?
    You must be joking.

    They get their resources and population drained and in return get an international football team and allowed to put pictures on sterling notes, that England won’t even except as payment, despite being legal tender.

    UK is the Sovet union and England is Russia with better propaganda.

    only since the late 90s did they have any form of local government.

    Ireland had 8 million people and Dublin was once in the top 10 largest European cities in the late 1700s.
    When Ireland left the UK, it had around 3 million people and Dublin was a small poverty ridden large town. Northern Ireland had over 1 million.

    Poorest regions in Western Europe include, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, richest include Southern England.

  23. I am in Scotland. We are a country. If your country doesn’t have adequate recognition, that doesn’t mean we deserve less.

  24. I agree British substituent countries get a lot of representation for their size, but the US states comment is dumb. The British substituent countries have their own peoples with their own culture, language and history. The US states have way less difference. Indtead IMO more attention should br given to native Americans, Russian Autonomous Republics and culturally separate peoples such as Frisians, Bretons, Catalonians etc.

  25. Wales and Scotland have different languages and especially in Wales there are people who speak it as a first language. They all have different schooling systems and structures, different laws and governing bodies.

    Wales and Scotland were forcibly integrated into England, which tried to destroy their language, their culture, their history, and their mythology. Tell someone from Wales or Scotland they’re English and the I reccomend running.

    I’ve not included NI in this comment cause I don’t know enough about how their systems work to comment TBF.

  26. I think it’s a question of demand. I don’t think there is huge demand for German Länder, or US States to be added, so they’re busy adding another family variation or laughing emoji

  27. As not enough people have requested it. There are UK countries that have requested their own flag. If you don’t ask and not enough people ask then how would a developer sitting in an office in San Francisco even know about your issues.

  29. Many countries in Europe have counties and regions. Such as France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, etc. But they’re not declared independant countries. Great Britain however is constituted of different countries that are recognized as such. That’s it.

  30. They are countries, not states, each of them is a country, because that’s what the UK is, a Union of countries, they each have their independent parliament, and hold quite a lot of authority, they just aren’t sovereign nations, the sovereignty of the United Kingdom is centralized, well, into this Union that we call United Kingdom.

  31. I mean, for US states specifically, about half the flags are…kinda not really *flags* as much as “oh, we’re making flags now? Okay, we’ll throw our seal on a colored background. Done and *done*.”

    I’d argue it’s shameful, yes, but for the states in question (I’m looking at you, every state I’ve ever lived in). There’s a good dozen state flags that I couldn’t possibly distinguish from my own at emoji size.

  33. It’s not the same though. The UK is a country of countries.

    Spain, Germany or the US aren’t a country of countries. They are just states or autonomous communities.

  36. UK constituent countries are only internationally visible during large football tournaments(World and European Cup), they are not visible during Olympic games when there is only UK. Reason for this is that GB football team was deemed too powerfull during the early days of FIFA, also, since football originated in the UK they were the first ones to play the game so they basically splintered their unitary team into several smaller ones( England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland) so they could play one another.
    Also, Scotland, Wales and Ireland had long and independent history outside of the GB (and England) thus they are far more recognizable then say Baden or Saxony( to be frank these were also renowned throughout history but they were never independent because they were part of HRE for the majority of their existence) and same goes for American states.
    I can see Spain being a potential exception to the things ive mentioned earlier as it was formed as an union of kingdoms of Castille and Aragon (just like GB being an union of England and Scotland) but I believed Spanish governments worked for centuries to centralise its numerous cortez into a unified state thus it would be contrary to that policy to promote its constituent states.

  37. It’s out of habit. UK has a great social presence and its constituent countries do too so they can effectively push private companies to put their flag in emojis. I don’t care since the England flag is the same as my city flag (Milan) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

  39. Every subnational divide gets their own emojis. Polish voivodeships, german lands etc. in the Unicode standard.

    Flag emojis are basically special letters, like UK for 🇬🇧 emoji. If you want the subnational flags you basically write UK+WLS in special invisible letters and you get 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.

    For Polish Silesia, it would be PL+08 or smthg like that, but literally no end device supports this, I believe this is done at the font level? But the spec *technically* allows for that, but only requires that end devices implement the flags of Wales England and Scotland, plus flag of Texas, since those are most used for “general interchange”

    I am oversimplifing but that’s the jist.

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