Change 433978 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; owner: Esanders):
[mediawiki/extensions/Kartographer@master] Add language input to maps dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/433978

Change 433985 had a related patch set uploaded (by Catrope; owner: Catrope):
[mediawiki/extensions/Kartographer@master] Update map language in VE rendering when it changes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/433985

Change 433985 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Kartographer@master] Update map language in VE rendering when it changes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/433985

Change 433978 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Kartographer@master] Add language input to maps dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/433978

So, I'm looking at the map and thinking this must have been fixed (unless I just don't understand what I'm looking at)? See below.

But I'm wondering what fix was put in place, if it was? Wouldn't this have just been a job for the new parameter lang="xx"

In T193659#4244248, @jmatazzoni wrote:

So, I'm looking at the map and thinking this must have been fixed (unless I just don't understand what I'm looking at)? See below.

But I'm wondering what fix was put in place, if it was? Wouldn't this have just been a job for the new parameter lang.

It seems that this task got a bit muddled up with a separate, but related, problem.

Right now, the map dialogue on the English Wikipedia (where this change is not live) looks like this:

Like you said, there's not three languages there any more; I guess that specific problem got fixed by something else, because these changes aren't live there yet. The change here is to add a field to let you change the language. The map dialogue on the beta cluster (where this change is live) looks like this:

(Don't ask me why the labels are completely missing. I don't know. Was it always like that?) There's a field there now that lets you change the language, and changing it uses the new lang parameter, as you can see from the diff of the change I made:

Oh, great. Thanks for adding the language in to VE!

In T193659#4246310, @jmatazzoni wrote:

Oh, great. Thanks for adding the language in to VE!

You're welcome!

In T193659#4245483, @Deskana wrote:

(Don't ask me why the labels are completely missing. I don't know. Was it always like that?)

For posterity, the answer to this question is that yes, it was always like that, so nothing broke. Only a small subset of countries are rendered: Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, and Israel. Those countries were chosen for having multiple official languages, RTL languages, languages in different scripts, and so on, for testing purposes.