3 ms·

While I like the idea of arabic lisp (BTW it shouldn't be hard to make "arabic Clojure") simply because it looks so much better than english, I disagree with yo

by krick 13y ago

While I like the idea of arabic lisp (BTW it shouldn't be hard to make "arabic Clojure") simply because it looks so much better than english, I disagree with your reasoning in general. My primary language is russian and I'm absolutely sure we should defragment the world. And I'm completely fine with using english as the only language for computing-related stuff. No, we haven't "defragmented enough already". Not even close. You may not know that, but there already exist programming languages "in russian". One is called 1С[1] and although probably unknown outside of russia, it's very much used for bookkeeping apps (because of being part of quite useful proprietary app, not because it's good). It's basically VB with "если" instead of "if". It proved to be totally useless and horrible. And there're more examples like that. Translating docs and such to other languages is always good, but not crucial. The reason is: you need to know english anyway, because there is and always will be useful stuff written in english, so people who are crying over absence of russian docs instead of learning english (unfortunately there are plenty of them) aren't really worth paying attention, because they aren't really in trouble, they are just lazy. One more example of fragmentation on language basis might be Ruby community. Even now there're two "main" mailing lists, one is japanese-only. Now it's not really a problem, because all important stuff is doubled in english, but a while ago it was not so easy for people that don't know japanese. Why english and not chinese? Because english is fairly simple. Simple compared to russian, simple compared to chinese and japanese, simple compared to finnish. (Seriously, the only problem with it is the "correct" spelling is sometimes very far from how the word is pronounced). It might be not as expressive sometimes, but that's a matter to reflect about for language-lovers, not a real problem. Hieroglyphic writing systems are complicated. I don't know chinese, but I do know japanese for some extent and the funny thing is even many native speakers cannot write properly in japanese… well, I know, many native english speakers cannot write properly as well, but for japanese it's even worse, seriously. And to be fair: I absolutely love japanese typography. Phone entries and posters look so much better in japanese than in latin/cyrillics. But it is complicated. Why not spanish? I don't know. It would be fine to use spanish as "the" language, I guess. It just happened so the main language for computing is english. Let it be english. Fine. [1] - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_1%D0%A1:%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B5 http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%... (sorry, russian only)

kome 13y ago
> Translating docs and such to other languages is always good, but not crucial. The reason is: you need to know english anyway, because there is and always will be useful stuff written in english, so people who are crying over absence of russian docs instead of learning english (unfortunately there are plenty of them) aren't really worth paying attention, because they aren't really in trouble, they are just lazy. Sadly, not everybody can have a good linguistic education from the go, it depends from a lot of factors, not just laziness. > Why english and not chinese? Because english is fairly simple. The notion of linguistic simplicity it's just bogus. English is simple for who? It depends from what is your mother tongue. English for a Dutch speaker is like super easy. But for a Chinese it is quite hard.
- threatofrain 13y ago
  I'd say that Chinese is honestly a harder language because it is filled with too much idiosyncrasy. I think most Chinese people cannot decipher the meaning or pronunciation of new Chinese words they've never seen before. And if they've forgotten how to write a character, then they are doomed without outside reference. I can use a word in English I've only seen or heard once in a novel event, and have a hope of using it passably. Even looking things up in the dictionary is hard... for Chinese people. I've seen Chinese parents pride themselves on how skillfully their children use the dictionary. That's because it's hard and worthy of pride; the radical system is so random and unnecessary from an outside view. Chinese is worthy of the reputation that perl has had, and for the exact same reasons: it's capriciously idiosyncratic and ruthless to non-native speakers. I'd also note that non-native language acquisition has been looked at by the US military, and I'm sure across the world, and I doubt that all languages are rated equally. I'm quite sure that Arabic and Chinese rate as very hard languages.
  - Crito 13y ago
    I suspect that english has been made easier for non-native speakers by a rich recent history of english being spoken by non-native speakers (particularly in America). This may have broken down expectations about the language that native english speakers have. For example, a native english speaker will not have much difficulty at all when they encounter an Russian who speaks english as a second language and frequently miss or misuse articles. Although the native Russian speaker is technically using the english language incorrectly, native english speakers have adapted to expect and tolerate a very high rate of errors. This lowers the level of language perfection that is necessary to effectively communicate in english. Speakers of languages without this sort of recent tradition of non-native speakers may find grammatical errors more jarring, because they have been exposed to them less often.

by krick 13y ago

kome 13y ago

> Translating docs and such to other languages is always good, but not crucial. The reason is: you need to know english anyway, because there is and always will be useful stuff written in english, so people who are crying over absence of russian docs instead of learning english (unfortunately there are plenty of them) aren't really worth paying attention, because they aren't really in trouble, they are just lazy. Sadly, not everybody can have a good linguistic education from the go, it depends from a lot of factors, not just laziness. > Why english and not chinese? Because english is fairly simple. The notion of linguistic simplicity it's just bogus. English is simple for who? It depends from what is your mother tongue. English for a Dutch speaker is like super easy. But for a Chinese it is quite hard.

threatofrain 13y ago
I'd say that Chinese is honestly a harder language because it is filled with too much idiosyncrasy. I think most Chinese people cannot decipher the meaning or pronunciation of new Chinese words they've never seen before. And if they've forgotten how to write a character, then they are doomed without outside reference. I can use a word in English I've only seen or heard once in a novel event, and have a hope of using it passably. Even looking things up in the dictionary is hard... for Chinese people. I've seen Chinese parents pride themselves on how skillfully their children use the dictionary. That's because it's hard and worthy of pride; the radical system is so random and unnecessary from an outside view. Chinese is worthy of the reputation that perl has had, and for the exact same reasons: it's capriciously idiosyncratic and ruthless to non-native speakers. I'd also note that non-native language acquisition has been looked at by the US military, and I'm sure across the world, and I doubt that all languages are rated equally. I'm quite sure that Arabic and Chinese rate as very hard languages.
- Crito 13y ago
  I suspect that english has been made easier for non-native speakers by a rich recent history of english being spoken by non-native speakers (particularly in America). This may have broken down expectations about the language that native english speakers have. For example, a native english speaker will not have much difficulty at all when they encounter an Russian who speaks english as a second language and frequently miss or misuse articles. Although the native Russian speaker is technically using the english language incorrectly, native english speakers have adapted to expect and tolerate a very high rate of errors. This lowers the level of language perfection that is necessary to effectively communicate in english. Speakers of languages without this sort of recent tradition of non-native speakers may find grammatical errors more jarring, because they have been exposed to them less often.