4 ms·

Given the prevalence of subject-object-verb order in non-English languages, I'm mildly surprised there aren't more RPN or Forth-like languages in this list.

by mkalv 10y ago

marcosdumay 10y ago
People just don't like RPN for some reason (habit maybe?). It's a mathematical preference, with little apparent feedback from the spoken language. But I don't see the prevalence of subject-object-verb. At least western languages are mostly subject-verb-object. Are you talking about eastern ones?
- philipov 10y ago
  SOV languages are the most numerous at 45% incidence[0], and include some big western ones, like Latin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%93verb#Incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%9...
  - LaMarseillaise 10y ago
    Latin is not really SOV. It is common, but word order can vary greatly. In this case, you can actually use any combination (SOV, SVO, OVS...). Classical writers would often place the most important or impactful word in a sentence last, and this word is often the verb.
tmalsburg2 10y ago
I think RPN works okay in natural language because you can often use discourse- and world-knowledge to guess the verb before hearing it. When reading programming languages that may work less well. But also note that, at least in some languages, there seems to be some pressure to move the verb to the front. For example, German is classified as a verb-final language but in main clauses the verb is actually "moved" to second position (subject-verb-object). Final position is only "preserved" in subordinate clauses. This suggests that early verbs may be easier to process.
derefr 10y ago
I'm always surprised that Ruby in particular, given its purely Japanese roots, resembles SVO a lot more than SOV. Though, on the other hand, for object-oriented languages in general, I often wish people new to them knew Japanese, because the "." operator (field-access, method lookup/calling) is kind of hard to explain in terms of English grammar, but in Japanese, you can just tell students to pronounce it as a の and they immediately get it.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  I suspect the influence of Smalltalk and Perl on Ruby kept it from being more SOV-ish. Too bad, since I actually have an odd preference for SOV and OSV grammars. They're easier on my brain. I think "backwards of" gets the point across alright for an English version of "."/no.
- zumu 10y ago
  > Ruby ... resembles SVO a lot more than SOV What parts exactly? As a Japanese speaker, all the object methods seem super intuitive. Specifically, the iterator methods vs traditional for loops. Rails and what not, however, not so much.

Given the prevalence of subject-object-verb order in non-English languages, I'm mildly surprised there aren't more RPN or Forth-like languages in this list.

by mkalv 10y ago

Given the prevalence of subject-object-verb order in non-English languages, I'm mildly surprised there aren't more RPN or Forth-like languages in this list.

marcosdumay 10y ago

People just don't like RPN for some reason (habit maybe?). It's a mathematical preference, with little apparent feedback from the spoken language. But I don't see the prevalence of subject-object-verb. At least western languages are mostly subject-verb-object. Are you talking about eastern ones?

philipov 10y ago
SOV languages are the most numerous at 45% incidence[0], and include some big western ones, like Latin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%93verb#Incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%9...
- LaMarseillaise 10y ago
  Latin is not really SOV. It is common, but word order can vary greatly. In this case, you can actually use any combination (SOV, SVO, OVS...). Classical writers would often place the most important or impactful word in a sentence last, and this word is often the verb.

tmalsburg2 10y ago

I think RPN works okay in natural language because you can often use discourse- and world-knowledge to guess the verb before hearing it. When reading programming languages that may work less well. But also note that, at least in some languages, there seems to be some pressure to move the verb to the front. For example, German is classified as a verb-final language but in main clauses the verb is actually "moved" to second position (subject-verb-object). Final position is only "preserved" in subordinate clauses. This suggests that early verbs may be easier to process.

derefr 10y ago

I'm always surprised that Ruby in particular, given its purely Japanese roots, resembles SVO a lot more than SOV. Though, on the other hand, for object-oriented languages in general, I often wish people new to them knew Japanese, because the "." operator (field-access, method lookup/calling) is kind of hard to explain in terms of English grammar, but in Japanese, you can just tell students to pronounce it as a の and they immediately get it.

PeCaN 10y ago
I suspect the influence of Smalltalk and Perl on Ruby kept it from being more SOV-ish. Too bad, since I actually have an odd preference for SOV and OSV grammars. They're easier on my brain. I think "backwards of" gets the point across alright for an English version of "."/no.
zumu 10y ago
> Ruby ... resembles SVO a lot more than SOV What parts exactly? As a Japanese speaker, all the object methods seem super intuitive. Specifically, the iterator methods vs traditional for loops. Rails and what not, however, not so much.