Out of curuosity, what is the programming equivalent of Japanese?
I was tempted to say Ruby, but based on my friends that are learning (or tried to learn Japanese), it seems like Ruby is trying to be the opposite. So not sure.
Ruby would maybe fit with toki pona : terse, simple, predictable.
as someone with some knowledge of japanese, japanese is extraordinarily terse, simple, and predictable. anyone who’s seen some anime should be familiar with this - there’s an incredible number of set phrases that carry a conversation in a precise way (that minimizes surprise)
Can’t imagine there is any. You need to learn three scripts to read Japanese fluently IINM. Katagana, Hirigana and something else… Probably someone who speaks Japanese can say.
I finally found the real reason why I like java: I‘m german
I also love Java, especially all the goodies added in 17. I’m not German though… 🤔
Do you like Russian, tho? Some Russians I’ve encountered did find it overcomplicated at times… Но в целом понимаю: мне норм заходит энглиш, а жабаскрипт вообще мимо
I think this thread is meant to flatter programmers and make linguists and sociologists extremely angry.
How so? Except the first sentence which is obviously not serious, I would agree with all linguistic statements or at least not disagree with any.
For one, Latin has more fancy rules than French. I guess the subjunctive is probably something English speakers might consider fancy, but Latin has that too. Latin has more times that are conjugations of the core verb (rather than needing auxiliary verbs), has grammatical cases (like German, but two more if you include vocative) and, idk, also just feels fancier in general.
I’ll admit it’s been years since I actually read any Latin and that I only have a surface level understanding of all languages mentioned except for French, but this post reads like it’s about the stereotypes of the countries rather than being about the languages themselves.
First, I wouldn’t count the vocative but let’s not get into this debate. Counting cases, Russian wins until you include other balto slavic languages or even Uralic ones.
Fancy is a very subjective term. Auxiliary verbs are fancy in their own way. From an orthographical viewpoint, French is quite fancy with all the silent letters, the way vocals are pronounced and stuff. French had like one spelling “reform” and it was like let’s make it more obvious we decent from Latin. Grammar wise it’s just like the other romance languages from what I know. They once got rid of the silent <s> and put a “gravestone” on the letter before (^) that has no other meaning than here was a silent s. Wouldn’t you call that fancy? Who would call it fancy? Mwa Moi!
I think the first sentence is probably enough to make anyone not afflicted with a eurocentric brain want to palm some face.
I think excusing it as a “not serious” statement is dangerous, as a lot of people even on Lemmy won’t second guess it.
The belief that the west is the origin of all science and culture is surprisingly pervasive, especially in the tech industry.
“The root of all modern languages” is a heck of a thing to say about Latin, and I’m pretty sure several billion people haven’t quite gotten that memo. Calling a chunk of Europe and a thin slice of Africa “the entire Universe” is also a spicy take. Come for the programmer humor, recoil in disgust for the rampant ethnocentrism, I guess.
I don’t disagree but I would still give the benefit of a doubt that “the whole universe” is such an exaggeration that it makes the overstatement obvious. But it would also be read as a praise. Overall, I wouldn’t take it all to seriously. Made me laugh but I also see the eurocentrism and it’s good to be aware of it.
I mean, French is vulgar Latin at best. And even if it wasn’t obviously spoken by all sorts of French people, elites or not, it’s also the official language of a bunch of other countries, from Monaco to Niger. “Elites and certain circles” is a very weird read, which I’m guessing is based on US stereotypes on the French? I don’t even think the British would commit to associating the French with elitism.
Russian speakers being “mostly autoritarian left” is also… kind of a lot to assume? I’m not even getting into that one further. I don’t know if the Esperanto one checks out, either. “Esperanto speaker” is the type of group, and this is true, whose wikipedia page doesn’t include statistics but instead just a list of names. Which is hilarious, but maybe not a great Python analogue. It may still be the best pairing there, because to my knowledge English speakers aren’t any worse at speaking English than the speakers of any other language. They are more monolingual, though.
It just all sounds extremely anglocentric to me, which is what it is, I suppose, but it really messes with the joke if you’re joking about languages specifically. One could do better with this concept, I think.
I think the elitism regards of French isn’t about French native speakers but about second language learners. French was the lingua franca in Europe for quite a while and using French loan words makes you sound more fancy and eloquent in many languages (compare “adult” with “grownup” which is a Latin loan word but I can’t think of a real example so I hope no one will notice).
The Russian bit I totally agree. Esperanto vs python is quite a leap, I agree. Showing a list (that’s probably not conclusive but still) is telling when compared to the go to beginners programming language. Still there are parallels in the design and intention. No comparison is ever perfect.
All in all it’s not perfect but as a joke, it works for me. Sure, it’s not unbiased but if not taken too seriously, I can laugh about it, and I can over analyze it for fun so win win for me.
About Esperanto, since it’s not a national language (intentionally so) it’s hard to do a census of speakers.
Also, to what level is considered “speaking Esperanto”? Taking the Duolingo course? Having it as a “mother tongue” where both parents speak it in a household in order to communicate? These are both probably countable, and produce wildly different numbers.
As someone with a background in linguistics, my jimmies are indeed rustled.
IDK, comparing Javascript to English while Java to German seems to either overblow the value of javascript or diminish the value of English.
This is great.
If I could make one change, there’s so many funnier languages that could have been Esperanto. I would have taken a shameless jab at F#, myself.
As a python developer, I’ll accept the shower joke in stride. But who are these Esperanto speakers you’re shitting on?
