

Re: OT - Programming Languages w/o English Syntax

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 at 11:10 GMT, Erik Steffl penned:
>> Hrm.  German and Latin are much more regular than English.  French
>> is, too, iirc.  English has a *lot* of irregularity.
>    german is regular? with each word changing depending on how it's
>    used in sentence (case)??? gender being pretty much random? what
>    are you talking about???

Regular != simple.

As far as I can tell, there are a lot of German verb tenses, but once
you learn their conjugations, you can apply them to just about anything.

I don't think that noun gender would have much affect on a programming
language.  I can't think of a language where "the" is a key word.

>    in english there are few cases of irregularity (past tense/past
>    participle of some verbs, few words have non-standard way to create
>    plural and that's pretty much it). each words has at most few
>    forms, easily recongizable (as in: the forms are created in same
>    way for almost all the words). and the structure of the sentence is
>    pretty simple as well.
>    compare that to german where each words has number of forms
>    (depending on what it relates to), and these forms are created in
>    different ways for different words.

Again, regularity vs. simplicity.

>    example: in english, if I know the verb (one word) I can pretty
>    much use it in a sentence. how many forms of each verb in german do
>    you need to know to be able to use it in a sentence?

In both languages, if you don't know the conjugation, your sentence is
still comprehensible.  Believe me, my father has proven often enough
that he can get genetives, gender, and conjugation wrong in German and
still be perfectly clear =)

Okay, okay, I can think of an irregular German bit.  As a small child, I
once said "Du hast mich wehgetutet."  (Instead of wehgetan.)  I
conjugated the verb improperly, and don't think I've ever been allowed
to forget it, even after 20 years!

your mail, anyway.

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