Thread: C++ and real languages

  1. #16
    Frequently Quite Prolix dwks's Avatar
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    I also saw something kind of funny that demonstrated the horror of reformed spelling, but I won't be able to find it.
    I know what you mean! Is this it?
    The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

    As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English” .

    In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kanhave one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

    In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where! more komplikated changes are possible.

    Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

    Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

    By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
    replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

    During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

    Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

    Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
    [edit] Incidentally, I was reading through the Debian package list and found gpt. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/devel/gpt [/edit]
    Last edited by dwks; 09-03-2008 at 02:25 PM.
    dwk

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  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by citizen View Post
    I also saw something kind of funny that demonstrated the horror of reformed spelling, but I won't be able to find it.
    The spelling "ghoti" is a stretched (bizarre) version of a regular english noun. Without googling, do you know what it is?

    I've also seen someone come up with a "if you reform english spelling, you end up with german", which was at one point published in one of the daily papers under Jeremy Clarkson's authorship, but I had at that point seem something very closely related before that, so I think it was somewhat less unique than it was made out to be.

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  3. #18
    Cat without Hat CornedBee's Avatar
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    If you reform German spelling, you end up with Dutch, though.

    "unt fertik war ti niterlantise sprake"
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  4. #19
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    OMFG dwks, stop it, you are killing me with that ........ I couldnt stop laughing...

  5. #20
    Frequently Quite Prolix dwks's Avatar
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    I thought it was pretty good, too. I'm a little surprised you haven't seen it before, though. I've seen it at least twice before somewhere on the internet.

    (In case it wasn't clear: I didn't write it, I found it in google.)
    dwk

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  6. #21
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Well, I generally don't get into the whole 'why english' debate often. I know a lot of people that have trouble learngin languages want everyone to learn their language, but honestly there are so many good reasons for english to be the world languge that I usually just ignore the counter-arguements.

  7. #22
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    Well I am of the mindset that perhaps it is a tad arrogant to ask everyone to learn your language so that you do not have to learn theirs. But that is just me. My only real contribution to this discussion is that programming languages are typically written in English since that is how it has been in the past and how it will probably remain for some time. You don't need to learn the entire language. You would only need to learn some VERY basic English to write code.

    Furthermore, even those of us who are fluent can point out that our fluency in English doesn't make some programming syntax any more intuitive. Case in point, for loops.

    Which essencially say "for each variable that is of within a given parameter while incremented in the given way..." Which is dandy when spelled out like that. But I would say if you showed for(x=0; x <= ARRAY_BOUNDARY; ++x) to an English pprofessor, he would have no idea what it meant.

    So in summary, it is what it is, and I am game to learn language that has syntax in a foreign tongue, but it just hasn't come up yet.

  8. #23
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    I've had an interesting idea for quite a while about creating a whole new language from scratch.
    1 letter for every unique sound.
    1 word = 1 meaning.
    Arranging the words so that the ones used most often are the shortest.
    Arranging the spelling so that it's harder to make dyslexic 'read errors' if you're reading quickly, or when you're talking.
    And I also thought it would be interesting if it were more object oriented. i.e. nouns would have a base class that makes up the beginning of the word, then adds more word fragments to make up the rest of the word. That way, even if you've never heard of that specific word before, you should understand at least part of it from it's base class. ex. Human could be something like: OrganismMammalBipedalHuman (except much shorter in the new language)

  9. #24
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Umm, english is already liek that, you shoudl study orthography. Only instead of callign it a base class, its called the root.

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    Umm, english is already liek that, you shoudl study orthography. Only instead of callign it a base class, its called the root.
    But it isn't consistent, and has a lot of words without a root ("Human" for example).

  11. #26
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cpjust View Post
    But it isn't consistent, and has a lot of words without a root ("Human" for example).
    That's because human IS the root.

  12. #27
    The larch
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    Human could be something like: OrganismMammalBipedalHuman
    And then, how would I refer to a human who specifically happens to have one leg: OrganismMammalMonopedalHuman?
    I might be wrong.

    Thank you, anon. You sure know how to recognize different types of trees from quite a long way away.
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  13. #28
    Algorithm Dissector iMalc's Avatar
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    Perhaps we should all use Klingon? That way everyone could be equally offended by it not being their native language.
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  14. #29
    Registered User OnionKnight's Avatar
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    Microsft Access has localized keywords for SQL queries. It was a pretty scary sight.

  15. #30
    Registered User Stonehambey's Avatar
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    Personally I don't think it makes any difference. The language is C++ (or whatever). Go up to an English speaking person who isn't a programmer and ask them what the 'for' or 'virtual' keywords are for and he wouldn't be able to tell you. The fact that he speaks English doesn't give him any kind of advantage here. Ultimately, learning a few English keywords is trivial when trying to learn how the language works and how to program in general.

    Comments are slightly different, I imagine you would write these with your target audience in mind. If the majority of those can use English, then it's only logical to write your comments in English.

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