6 ms·

Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? And what about the fact that some concepts and words are enunciated m

by mablap 10y ago

Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? And what about the fact that some concepts and words are enunciated more succintly or clearly in different languages? I mean, you have the perfect example in front of you: why are there so many programming languages? Could it be that some language constructs are more difficult in one language vs the other? Why invent new programming languages when you've got C?

ludamad 10y ago
Re: "And what about the fact that some concepts and words are enunciated more succintly or clearly in different languages?" We just borrow the relevant words :)
- sbmassey 10y ago
  Sometimes it is not just individual words, but grammatical structures which make things more succint. Latin has lots of such like your gerundives or your supines where you can express with a simple word ending what would take a bunch of words in English
Kenji 10y ago
I am willing to give up my language in favour of a world language - in fact, I have already done that. I think in English. I write all my poetry, stories and dreams in English, I only communicate in that language unless it's with family or coworkers. I pretty much gave up on my native language. I feel like English is superior in many ways because it has words that my language does not, which forces me to describe awkwardly what I mean instead of using a single word. In German, happiness and luck are merged into one single word (da fuq?). German has no succinct word for contrarian (noun). Or another point for English: Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. - Paul Tillich
- mablap 10y ago
  Erm, Tillich could have chosen a better example: in French you also have isolement and solitude.
  - Kenji 10y ago
    I think Tillich wanted to make a point about solitude and loneliness, not the superiority of English. I find his point interesting in both contexts.
- jvanloov 10y ago
  English has these words that your language does not, because it borrowed heavily from several other languages in the past. Having only one language would kill off that source for diversity. Dutch also has one word for happiness and luck ("geluk"), although in Flanders you can use "chance" to express "luck" specifically (borrowed from French). In some ways, English allows for more specificity compared to German, but the reverse is also true.
- smsm42 10y ago
  German, however, has schadenfreude, gestalt, eigenvalue, angst, weltschmerz and poltergeist ;)
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    English had all of these, exactly. Every child knows poltergeist, from Harry Potter. Every teenager knows angst. The others are less universal, but I'd expect a university graduate to know them.
    - eropple 10y ago
      Where exactly do you think those words come from?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
ggreer 10y ago
The reason we have lots of programming languages is because: 1. They're not that different. Once you've learned a few, picking up new ones is pretty easy. 2. They're much easier to learn than human languages. To answer your first question: I probably wouldn't stop using english myself, but I don't think I'd teach it to my children.
- mablap 10y ago
  Have you read the article? The condition has to be stronger than simply not teaching it to your children. You have to absolutely and completely remove the worldview, cultural heritage, geographic knowledge etc that comes with it. Thus to get my (and the article's) point, you need not just stop teaching it to children, you have to completely erase the underlying knowledge the language holds and start over in a new language. This is the point: you lose much more than what appears on first glance. And concerning programming languages, I don't see how picking up brainfuck for example is easy, but someone still put the effort into creating it. Imagine a universe in which you'd have to solve every single programming problem in C. You could dream up all sorts of programming language concepts, but you could never use any other language than C. I bet you'd find that a bit boring and tedious... Make no mistake, I'm not advocating for languages to keep their purity. I think it's a good thing they mix and borrow concepts and words. But I do find the idea of having one world language an utter absurdity.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > Have you read the article? 'Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."' https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - mablap 10y ago
      Noted. However I think the tone I used is different than what is given as an example. I was really asking the question, since depending on the answer, our disagreement would be on a different level.
Chris2048 10y ago
> Why invent new programming languages when you've got C? The practicalities of PLs aren't at all like spoken natural languages. For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. Secondly: > Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? What the OP thinks is irrelevant, it's whether this would be desirable or not. It would also not be a "do this now" thing and more of "in years to come, humanity will do this". I think mankind will one day set foot on mars, and this effort will be a good thing - this does not mean I should be willing to be put on a rocket today.
- mablap 10y ago
  For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. A counter example to this is that any children can be taught any language. The fact that an adult can't learn new languages as easily speaks more to the architecture of the computer (brain) than to its capacity to run various languages.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    I suppose - although a language would probably die out if children couldn't learn it - or the unlearnable parts in any case. The clause "with little effort" is not counteracted though - for a computer this represents a short download-and-install of a compiler/interpreter. Even writing a compiler may take the same amount of time it takes to learn a language from scratch.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  > The practicalities of PLs aren't at all like spoken natural languages. For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. But not with equal effort. Machines have been developed to run specific languages (Burroughs mainframes - Algol 60; Lisp Machines - Lisp), and languages have been developed to run on specific machines (C - PDP-11).
derriz 10y ago
Indeed. And why have multiple OSes - imagine the utilitarian value of having every computer in the world run Windows. The claim that different computer languages are easier to learn than different human languages betrays an incredible lack of perspective - 99% of humankind cannot manage even a single programming language while the majority worldwide are at least bilingual.
kazinator 10y ago
> Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? If only 321 people are left in the world speaking English, and billions speak Mandarin, absolutely! It means that the world has basically said "to hell with English", and you're best off if you do too.

by mablap 10y ago

ludamad 10y ago

Re: "And what about the fact that some concepts and words are enunciated more succintly or clearly in different languages?" We just borrow the relevant words :)

sbmassey 10y ago
Sometimes it is not just individual words, but grammatical structures which make things more succint. Latin has lots of such like your gerundives or your supines where you can express with a simple word ending what would take a bunch of words in English

Kenji 10y ago

I am willing to give up my language in favour of a world language - in fact, I have already done that. I think in English. I write all my poetry, stories and dreams in English, I only communicate in that language unless it's with family or coworkers. I pretty much gave up on my native language. I feel like English is superior in many ways because it has words that my language does not, which forces me to describe awkwardly what I mean instead of using a single word. In German, happiness and luck are merged into one single word (da fuq?). German has no succinct word for contrarian (noun). Or another point for English: Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. - Paul Tillich

mablap 10y ago
Erm, Tillich could have chosen a better example: in French you also have isolement and solitude.
- Kenji 10y ago
  I think Tillich wanted to make a point about solitude and loneliness, not the superiority of English. I find his point interesting in both contexts.
jvanloov 10y ago
English has these words that your language does not, because it borrowed heavily from several other languages in the past. Having only one language would kill off that source for diversity. Dutch also has one word for happiness and luck ("geluk"), although in Flanders you can use "chance" to express "luck" specifically (borrowed from French). In some ways, English allows for more specificity compared to German, but the reverse is also true.
smsm42 10y ago
German, however, has schadenfreude, gestalt, eigenvalue, angst, weltschmerz and poltergeist ;)
- Symbiote 10y ago
  English had all of these, exactly. Every child knows poltergeist, from Harry Potter. Every teenager knows angst. The others are less universal, but I'd expect a university graduate to know them.
  - eropple 10y ago
    Where exactly do you think those words come from?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

ggreer 10y ago

The reason we have lots of programming languages is because: 1. They're not that different. Once you've learned a few, picking up new ones is pretty easy. 2. They're much easier to learn than human languages. To answer your first question: I probably wouldn't stop using english myself, but I don't think I'd teach it to my children.

mablap 10y ago
Have you read the article? The condition has to be stronger than simply not teaching it to your children. You have to absolutely and completely remove the worldview, cultural heritage, geographic knowledge etc that comes with it. Thus to get my (and the article's) point, you need not just stop teaching it to children, you have to completely erase the underlying knowledge the language holds and start over in a new language. This is the point: you lose much more than what appears on first glance. And concerning programming languages, I don't see how picking up brainfuck for example is easy, but someone still put the effort into creating it. Imagine a universe in which you'd have to solve every single programming problem in C. You could dream up all sorts of programming language concepts, but you could never use any other language than C. I bet you'd find that a bit boring and tedious... Make no mistake, I'm not advocating for languages to keep their purity. I think it's a good thing they mix and borrow concepts and words. But I do find the idea of having one world language an utter absurdity.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > Have you read the article? 'Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."' https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mablap 10y ago
    Noted. However I think the tone I used is different than what is given as an example. I was really asking the question, since depending on the answer, our disagreement would be on a different level.

Chris2048 10y ago

> Why invent new programming languages when you've got C? The practicalities of PLs aren't at all like spoken natural languages. For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. Secondly: > Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? What the OP thinks is irrelevant, it's whether this would be desirable or not. It would also not be a "do this now" thing and more of "in years to come, humanity will do this". I think mankind will one day set foot on mars, and this effort will be a good thing - this does not mean I should be willing to be put on a rocket today.

mablap 10y ago
For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. A counter example to this is that any children can be taught any language. The fact that an adult can't learn new languages as easily speaks more to the architecture of the computer (brain) than to its capacity to run various languages.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  I suppose - although a language would probably die out if children couldn't learn it - or the unlearnable parts in any case. The clause "with little effort" is not counteracted though - for a computer this represents a short download-and-install of a compiler/interpreter. Even writing a compiler may take the same amount of time it takes to learn a language from scratch.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
> The practicalities of PLs aren't at all like spoken natural languages. For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. But not with equal effort. Machines have been developed to run specific languages (Burroughs mainframes - Algol 60; Lisp Machines - Lisp), and languages have been developed to run on specific machines (C - PDP-11).

derriz 10y ago

Indeed. And why have multiple OSes - imagine the utilitarian value of having every computer in the world run Windows. The claim that different computer languages are easier to learn than different human languages betrays an incredible lack of perspective - 99% of humankind cannot manage even a single programming language while the majority worldwide are at least bilingual.

kazinator 10y ago

> Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? If only 321 people are left in the world speaking English, and billions speak Mandarin, absolutely! It means that the world has basically said "to hell with English", and you're best off if you do too.