If I choose the flag from the Netherlands to get Dutch, I'll probably be confused by a whole bunch of terminology since the dutch of different countries differs vastly more than the English from different countries.

"People who complain about flags are nitpickers" is a perfect way to say "I grew up in a gigantic monoculture where you can drive 5 hours in any direction without encountering a different language, if you ignore the natives"

In the specific case of Taiwan, if you want to maintain good business relations with normal civilians on both sides of the straits you need to represent Taiwan as a state to Mainland China IPs and represent it as a country to Taiwanese IPs and most of the rest of the world.

I'm not advocating any particular political view, this is just the technological fuss you have to go through to maximize the number of happy customers. So sometimes it's much easier to just forget the flags, state the language and currency directly as text, and skirt around these issues.

As for language selection, I really don't think it's necessary to beautify it UI-wise. Pick based on the user's Accept-Language header and 99.99% of the time you'll present it exactly as the user wanted without them having to select anything. You can then implement a text-only language selector somewhere in a less conspicuous place, such as the footer, than polluting your navigation header.

To explain, let's turn it around. Assuming you also live in the US, imagine a EU company would make the following assumptions that are common (to the point of feeling entirely "natural") in lots of European countries, but wrong in the US, and think about how that could impede you in varying business situations:

* There is only one time zone in a given country.

* VAT and other sales taxes are the same over the whole country (and therefore just included in the display price).

* Every debit card, credit card etc. has a PIN, and a common API to the bank for card/bank-specific verification.

* Every bank account is identified by IBAN, even across countries. Wiring money is always free.

* Decimal separator is universally "," and grouping is ".". (Bonus: Let's instead be in an Asian country where it's common to group digits by 4 instead of 3.)

* Dates are always either in order "DD MM YYYY" or ISO YYYY-MM-DD. In the case the year is omitted, "DD MM" is assumed and no clarification is ever made. Your appointment is 4.5., thanks for doing business with us! Sincerely yours, noreply@example.com.

* Car-related business: You have to be at least 18 to drive a car (and have spent the equivalent of thousands of dollars and many hours of mandatory theoretical and practical training). It is illegal to drive a car more than 2 years without a thorough inspection that forces you to fix even minor things (Autobahn speeds are dangerous), so old cars are uncommon. There are special enthusiast registrations for so called "oldtimers", but that still requires extra maintenance.

* Gastronomy-related: But you're allowed to drink beer at 16 (was at least the case when I was that age), anything else 18.

* You have to use/publish your real name, address, and other information mandatorily in a lot more situations (e.g. when hosting a website of any kind--imagine a business enforcing that for all customers).

You may find that if you want to do business internationally at all, you have to start caring about those things.

Un-natural UI decision then if a language can exists in more than one country, and one country can have many languages?