3 ms·
Some languages are the same just with different vocabulary and syntax (different key words, library function names, differing ways of indicating statements and
by webjprgm 14y ago
Some languages are the same just with different vocabulary and syntax (different key words, library function names, differing ways of indicating statements and function calls) but have the same set of concepts for programming. It seems to me that knowing sets of related programming languages does not give the same stretch as knowing completely different languages. So knowing English + Java/C/PHP might not make you quadrilingual, whereas knowing English + Java + Haskel might make you trilingual.
- adjwilli 14y agoBy that logic knowing Spanish, Portuguese and Italian wouldn't make you trilingual since they're all related with different "key words, library function names", etc. I mean vocabularies and small grammar rules.
- beagle3 14y agoI would argue that, yes, someone who speaks Russian, Chinese and Amhari is more trilingual than someone who speaks Spanish, Portugese and Italian. Taking myself as an example, I learned French in junior high (between the ages of 12-14), never lived in a French speaking country, and never learned a word of Spanish - and yet, I can read and understand simple Spanish. If I upgraded that to full-spanish, I wouldn't count it as a "whole new language". (p.s. my mother tongue is neither English, nor is it Latin, Germanic or anything else that might have any remote connection to English, French or Spanish)