5 ms·

English++ Project (2008)

32 points by janisz 6y ago

vladharbuz 6y ago
I've spent 10 minutes looking through this page and I still could not describe to someone what this project actually is.
- brian_herman 6y ago
  I think it’s a way to learn English.
- vintagedave 6y ago
  It is "a complementary English course book for computer science students and their teachers." Basically, for people learning a foreign language, those learning often need to learn a _specific subdomain_ of the language. If you're a computer science student, there's a lot of English you need to know there that you would not find in a general ESL (English as a Second Language) course. This is an English textbook for computer science students. It contains standard learning-English components, such as short essays on topics followed by questions to demonstrate understanding, but all those topics are around computer science.
rsa25519 6y ago
From the book: > In the English++ project a foreign language is naturally English and a specific purpose is the field of computer science. I actually might spend time time reading this. I'm a native English speaker, but it covers a lot of computer at a high level in a way that's very easy to understand.
Y_Y 6y ago
The title made me worried someone had tried to weld an object system onto English. The language is enough of a shitshow as-is. It turns out just to be a book for learning English, but written by Polish computer scientists. Sounds interesting. I'm glad I never had to learn English as a foreign language though.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > I'm glad I never had to learn English as a foreign language though. For reference, English is one of the standard examples supporting the theory that languages which are learned by a lot of adults become simpler and easier to learn over time. (The other standards being Latin, Mandarin Chinese, and Swahili.) The implication is that if you did need to learn a foreign language, English is one of the easiest ones.
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    Interesting, this is the first I heard of this. Do you have a source that you could point to that lays out the argument (for English specifically)?
    - posterboy 6y ago
      There's a common wisdom iI learned from english.stackexchange comments that English is one of the easiest languages to learn, but one of the toughest to master. Which strikes a fair ballance. It relates for example to the relatively strict word order. There are a number of (well sourced) posts on linguistics.stackexchange dealing with a different question, if language complexity varies, i.e. if a language could be simpler per se, which is chiefly denied. Any simplification in one part of the grammar will lead to an increase of complexity in another part. In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. There is just no way to measure this precisely, since it is of course subjective.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. No, this is an active theory in linguistics.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      I found several papers discussing the theory, which seem to mostly trace back through https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 . Laying out the argument for English specifically is of a little less interest, but you can find remarks like this: > The degree and specificity of morphological encoding can reach astounding levels. For example, Karok—a language of N.W. California—has morphological suffixes for forms of containment pa:θ-kirih ‘‘throw into fire’’, pa:θ-kurih ‘‘throw into water’’, pa:θ-ruprih ‘‘throw in through a solid’’ (the affixes are unrelated to the lexemes for water, fire, etc.) > Clearly, such elaboration does not arise from communicative necessity. Researchers have long been puzzled by the reasons why some languages abound in such overspecification, while others (sometimes closely related ones) eschew it. > For example, in comparing English and German we find that where the surface structures of English and German contrast, English is less specified, leaving more to context, thus, ‘‘...German speakers are forced to make certain semantic distinctions which can regularly be left unspecified in English’’, p. 28). For example, German obligatorily specifies the direction of motion in the place adverbs here/there/where. Compare: hier/her; dort/hin; wo/wohin. English can specify direction using to and from (‘‘where to’’ versus ‘‘where from’’), but such specification is optional and is generally omitted (Note that "where to" and "where from" were expressed in older varieties of English as the words whither and whence.) That paper does cite What Happened to English? ( https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/dia.19.2.02wha https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour... ), which is more directly on the topic of "English is simpler than any other Germanic language".
ironhaven 6y ago
As i was browsing the page i looked at the listing section and I was confused where the audio clips where. After opening inspect element it looks like the page requires Flash to play the clips. This shows how old this project and is a example of a piece of the web no longer available with the deprecation of Adobe Flash. On the bright side Flash is just being used as a player for static mp3's referenced in the HTML, so you can just open the files by yourself.
ElectricMind 6y ago
Does this mean we remove articles in ++ version of English ? You have my vote :)
jhvkjhk 6y ago
My first thought about “English++” is the Newspeak from 1984(like doubleplusgood). When I find this project is only a English textbook, I sighed with relief.

32 points by janisz 6y ago

I've spent 10 minutes looking through this page and I still could not describe to someone what this project actually is.

brian_herman 6y ago
I think it’s a way to learn English.
vintagedave 6y ago
It is "a complementary English course book for computer science students and their teachers." Basically, for people learning a foreign language, those learning often need to learn a _specific subdomain_ of the language. If you're a computer science student, there's a lot of English you need to know there that you would not find in a general ESL (English as a Second Language) course. This is an English textbook for computer science students. It contains standard learning-English components, such as short essays on topics followed by questions to demonstrate understanding, but all those topics are around computer science.

rsa25519 6y ago

From the book: > In the English++ project a foreign language is naturally English and a specific purpose is the field of computer science. I actually might spend time time reading this. I'm a native English speaker, but it covers a lot of computer at a high level in a way that's very easy to understand.

Y_Y 6y ago

The title made me worried someone had tried to weld an object system onto English. The language is enough of a shitshow as-is. It turns out just to be a book for learning English, but written by Polish computer scientists. Sounds interesting. I'm glad I never had to learn English as a foreign language though.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> I'm glad I never had to learn English as a foreign language though. For reference, English is one of the standard examples supporting the theory that languages which are learned by a lot of adults become simpler and easier to learn over time. (The other standards being Latin, Mandarin Chinese, and Swahili.) The implication is that if you did need to learn a foreign language, English is one of the easiest ones.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  Interesting, this is the first I heard of this. Do you have a source that you could point to that lays out the argument (for English specifically)?
  - posterboy 6y ago
    There's a common wisdom iI learned from english.stackexchange comments that English is one of the easiest languages to learn, but one of the toughest to master. Which strikes a fair ballance. It relates for example to the relatively strict word order. There are a number of (well sourced) posts on linguistics.stackexchange dealing with a different question, if language complexity varies, i.e. if a language could be simpler per se, which is chiefly denied. Any simplification in one part of the grammar will lead to an increase of complexity in another part. In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. There is just no way to measure this precisely, since it is of course subjective.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. No, this is an active theory in linguistics.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    I found several papers discussing the theory, which seem to mostly trace back through https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 . Laying out the argument for English specifically is of a little less interest, but you can find remarks like this: > The degree and specificity of morphological encoding can reach astounding levels. For example, Karok—a language of N.W. California—has morphological suffixes for forms of containment pa:θ-kirih ‘‘throw into fire’’, pa:θ-kurih ‘‘throw into water’’, pa:θ-ruprih ‘‘throw in through a solid’’ (the affixes are unrelated to the lexemes for water, fire, etc.) > Clearly, such elaboration does not arise from communicative necessity. Researchers have long been puzzled by the reasons why some languages abound in such overspecification, while others (sometimes closely related ones) eschew it. > For example, in comparing English and German we find that where the surface structures of English and German contrast, English is less specified, leaving more to context, thus, ‘‘...German speakers are forced to make certain semantic distinctions which can regularly be left unspecified in English’’, p. 28). For example, German obligatorily specifies the direction of motion in the place adverbs here/there/where. Compare: hier/her; dort/hin; wo/wohin. English can specify direction using to and from (‘‘where to’’ versus ‘‘where from’’), but such specification is optional and is generally omitted (Note that "where to" and "where from" were expressed in older varieties of English as the words whither and whence.) That paper does cite What Happened to English? ( https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/dia.19.2.02wha https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour... ), which is more directly on the topic of "English is simpler than any other Germanic language".

ironhaven 6y ago

As i was browsing the page i looked at the listing section and I was confused where the audio clips where. After opening inspect element it looks like the page requires Flash to play the clips. This shows how old this project and is a example of a piece of the web no longer available with the deprecation of Adobe Flash. On the bright side Flash is just being used as a player for static mp3's referenced in the HTML, so you can just open the files by yourself.

ElectricMind 6y ago

Does this mean we remove articles in ++ version of English ? You have my vote :)

jhvkjhk 6y ago

My first thought about “English++” is the Newspeak from 1984(like doubleplusgood). When I find this project is only a English textbook, I sighed with relief.