My university tried to teach in German. Complete insanity.
We where puzzling way too long what "Reihung" or "Rahmenwerk" mean.
Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
151–160 of 174 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#152In Russia people don't switch to English to discuss CS, but the whole CS jargon is stuffed with loanwords from English. It normally goes well, Russian is quite flexible with adapting foreign words to its own grammar.
What was painful for me is writing about CS in the university (master thesis, some papers to local journals etc). In Russia you are not allowed to write your university contributions in English, apparently because some of your older supervisors will be uncomfortable with reading it. Also you can't use jargon, because university is a serious business, everything should sound very scientific. So I had to invent my own translations of all the terms of interest, and then put the English word in parentheses, so that reader has at least a slightest chance to understand what I'm writing about.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's pretty insensitive. Non-English speakers have the option to learn English. It takes a couple of years, but I know a lot of people who have done it. And I can't think of a better investment. Disabled people do not have the choice to make their disabilities go away. We have to learn to live with it. Compared to what I've already done to try to make my life normal, learning Russian, Urdu and Swahili simultaneousl…
What I meant is that some people simply don't speak English and still can be productive while working in tech. There is no reason to be "shocked" about it. That is all. Whether they can learn or not is a different discussion. And I really do not want to get into some "who has it harder?" victimization game, but it surprises me that you don't see the exclusionary nature of expecting people to learn English to study an…
I think it's only fair for people with disabilities to be offended when someone that's not been through the difficulties that they've been through make use of their disabilities for comparisons in making a point.
"mnemonicsloth" point is valid. And he's only asking for more consideration, and in a polite manner afaic.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#154I'm Russian and Georgian native speaker. Short answer to your question is "NO", but I would not bother writing it, if not the long answer I really want to share. While languages I speak are not similar at all, I see the same behavior among my colleagues, whatever their native language is. They use IT specific English words mixed into their native language. What is even more interesting, is that these English words do…
I'm star-struck every time I see the Georgian alphabet, those letters are beautiful.
Aww thanks. I mean... მადლობა :-)
მე ყოველთვის მიხარია როცა გამომდის ქართული კულტურის გაზიარება პოზიტიურ კონტექსტში.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#155Russian/Ukrainian: almost impossible. It sounds like english anyway, as more than every other word is english.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#156I am a native Sinhalese, and I can speak Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) and Tamil. No, we cannot use native languages for CS. For Sinhalese, there is an on-going attempt to invent words or rather put words together to translate a technical term to Sinhalese, but nobody can figure it out. "Download", for example, is literally translated to a word that doubles as taking something down via a crane, and it has become a so…
In Tamil, lot of CS terms are already translated but nobody uses that in speaking form. And they are properly translated in websites and mobile apps too.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#157For my PhD thesis, I was required to write an abstract in my native language, German, and had a pretty hard time of it. On the other hand, I've experimented a bit with high school level CS teaching, and found that with sufficient preparation, it's fairly doable. I suspect that when we struggle to express a concept in our native language, we may have somewhat deceived ourselves in how clearly we expressed the concept…
That's quite surprising to me! Because it used to be the case that some reading ability in German was required for the serious engineer or scientist. From memory from around 1850 up to 1920s. (I'm not that old heh, but I know people who have done serious historical research in engineering that required German)
At least in robotics a lot of good current research is being published in German.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#158As a fellow swede, I don't feel any compelling need to switch languages for discussing CS topics. On the contrary I'm rather sick of speaking other peoples languages after many years abroad and in international organizations. I try to use Swedish translation of concepts, when there are natural and intelligible ones available.
If there isn't a good direct translation available, just force a bit of swedish morphology onto the english root and everything flows. In some ways this makes our language richer and more specific than the one we borrow from. For us "mejl" is unambigous, whereas "mail" in english is not.
As a bonus, given an appropriate context, version control in Swedish is a cornucopia of innuendo.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m curious as to why master and branch are borrowed rather than translated. Those seem straightforward enough to translate. But then again, I don’t speak German and I’m not a linguist.
Croatian here. In the circles I run, everyone says the english variant "branch", even though it could be straightforwardly translated (to "grana"). The reason is the following - when I hear "branch" it evokes the version control concept in my mind. When I hear "grana" it evokes the part of the tree or bush. So, we use "branch". And if I were to try to translate "master", it would end up translated as a word that coul…
It strikes me that by reserving “grana” for branch of a tree, and “branch” for source code branch, you have created a more precise language than English for these concepts.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> StackOverflow is in English cough cough - https://pt.stackoverflow.com/ - https://ru.stackoverflow.com/ - https://es.stackoverflow.com/ - https://jp.stackoverflow.com/ More seriously though, it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue: more content being available in English which leads to more people having to learn English and might end up producing English content. But this in no point is an exclusive thing. There is…
> cough cough I know of the localized versions of StackOverflow but they hardly are worth visiting. > it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue: more content being available in English which leads to more people having to learn English and might end up producing English content. It's not an issue, it's awesome. > But this in no point is an exclusive thing. There is nothing that says that if you participate in HN in Engl…
Naming a variable? Definitely.
Writing a library? Very few people do it, even less do it for global market.
Shitposting on reddit? Maybe; you have fewer options with English, because anglosphere is very monopolized.
Speaking English in sound? Absolutely retarded.