mod rewrite rule after turn off languages

[JVRolle]

Hi,

I've a problem with a language change of my prestashop 1.6.1.5.

When we started our online business, we decided to setup different languages.
Now after some month we notice that the effort is currently to high to handle more then one language.
So we decided to turn off two of our three languages. So far no bigger issue.

Languages are not available in frontend anymore and if a user requests a URI of one of the not active languages he falls back on a 404 page.

Old URL: https://myDomain.de/gb/category/product.html

New URL: https://myDomain.de/category/product.html

Nevertheless there is an open issue when we discuss about searchengines and user experience.
From the customer perspective it would be more nice to come to the content I was  looking for instead to get a 404 page.
...and I'm sure this is also  what searchengines want.

Regarding that I thought I can write a general working rewrite condition and rule.
The idea was the following but it seams to not work that way:

 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^gb [NC]
RewriteRule ^gb/(.*)$ https://www.myDomain.de/$1 [R=301,L]

second try

RewriteRule ^/?gb/.*$^ https://www.myDomain.de/$1 [R=301,L]

 

Does someone has an idea what's wrong. It's driving me nuts :-(

Thanks a lot in advance for your hints

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by JVRolle (see edit history)