> Around thirty years ago I was a kid with a computer. I learned to program quite a few years before I learned English. I also used DOS without understanding En

> Around thirty years ago I was a kid with a computer. I learned to program quite a few years before I learned English. I also used DOS without understanding English. I knew what to type to do things, but I didn't know what the words meant. I could start programs, I'd play in QBASIC, write small programs and amusements. To me "PRINT" was the word that made text appear on the screen. I learned years later the word meant something in English. Wow, this is exactly what happened to me (probably between 8 and 10). I had an old 286 computer, where I learnt BASIC by reading programs already available on the computer. I wrote programs, but had no idea what the keywords meant. I remember reading out loud "IF … THEN … ELSE" that I pronounced "if … ten … elsse", and my father in the room corrected my pronunciation, "it's if … then … else". I was very surprised, because he didn't know BASIC at all. "How do you know this?" "It's how we pronounced it in English. It means 'si … alors … sinon'." o_o It was a revelation to me: the "keywords" I typed in BASIC programs were not just meaningless tokens for the BASIC language, they came from English and had a meaning outside BASIC.