Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#41

Post by darkhorse13 »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #30
yowlingcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ignorant statement. Pakhi means "bird" in Bengali. Check the translation. Edit: To all the downvoters, I truly hope that ignorance is bliss for you. Maybe learn another language before you project your ressentiment tinged identity-politics idiocy onto something you don't even understand. [1] https://translate.google.com/?sl=bn&tl=en&text=pakhi&op=tran...

You're probably being downvoted for the 1st sentence. And for the Edit. Why is it ignorant? OP is just stating a fact. Is OP the PC police, or is he the canary trying to warn that the "cancel mob" might attack this project if they took offense at the name, I can't tell. You saying it means "bird" is also just a fact...

I wouldn't go so far as to say it is ignorant, but just imagine if some english speaking person named their programming language or product "Bird", and one of the top comments brought up the fact that it was similar to a racial slur in their language.

I'm not saying it is wrong to point this out, but it must be slightly disheartening for the author of the language. And more importantly, Bangladesh was literally called East Pakistan, so I'm sure whoever made this is aware of the actual racial slur.

Also please note, I'm actually Bangladeshi, so I'm not speaking for a group I don't represent here.

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#42

Post by rayiner »

mtalantikite wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #21

Cool project! A bit off topic, but I’m a bad Bangladeshi and never learned the alphabet. Any sources you recommend to learn? I’m not great with (human) languages to begin with, but the character set is a real hurdle.

I’m currently learning Bangla and there are a few basic apps for iOS that present the letter along with it’s name, pronunciation, and how it is to be written (as in how to piece together the strokes to write the letter). It’s definitely geared towards kids, but the one I’m using is called BorKnow. Also I’m using a book by Hanne Ruth Thompson called Beginner’s Bengali that does a good job at introducing the script.

Thanks! May I ask what prompted you to learn Bangla?

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#43

Post by _s »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #7

While I 100% applaud the effort - and I absolutely love the idea of languages in non-English languages - you should be aware that phonetically (and if you drop the 'h'), the name is a racist term in the UK at least.

Isn’t “Paki” just shortened for “Pakistani”? I never knew the word itself to be considered racist; but it’s definitely been used often in a racist / degenerative context and manner.

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#44

Post by bobochan »

aramachandran7 wrote: post #2

How common are programming languages designed with base languages other than english? This is the first one i’ve seen.

This is a different take, but I have always been a huge fan of Damian Conway's Lingua::Romana::Perligata, a thought experiment in writing Perl in Latin.

Just a taste from the documentation: "To simplify the mind-numbingly complex rules of declension and conjugation that govern inflexions in Latin, Perligata treats all user-defined scalar and array variables as neuter nouns of the second declension -- singular for scalars, plural for arrays."

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#45

Post by krylon »

aramachandran7 wrote: post #2

How common are programming languages designed with base languages other than english? This is the first one i’ve seen.

I vaguely remember reading about an esoteric programming language that was based on Klingon. IIRC, it was a functional language. (-:

But I do not speak or read or write Klingon, so I never looked at it, and I do not remember the name, either. It did make me chuckle, though.

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#46

Post by hctaw »

gerdesj wrote: post #38
tsegratis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting concept from Turkish is each word can directly give you all (or single) objects that do or can respond to that action yap -- make yapan -- the one who makes yapanlar -- all those who make yapılan -- then one being made yapılanlar -- all those being made This would be like functions having a standard way to return lists of all objects they're related to Or direct solving of some complex queries like 'Wh…

* yap: make * yapan: maker * yapanlar: makers * yapılan: made (I think, "then one being made" doesn't make sense to me) * yapılanlar: OK you got me there! It may be another job for "made" or goods or a synonym eg: objets d'art. Yes, I did just use three languages as my own in one sentence. I'm not a linguist. I've managed to fail French and German and yet pass Latin (whatever the heck that is!) at O level (old UK exa…

"Makee" and "makees" aren't in the dictionary but native speakers would probably understand what you mean

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#47

Post by alex_smart »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #12
PaulRobinson wrote: post #7

While I 100% applaud the effort - and I absolutely love the idea of languages in non-English languages - you should be aware that phonetically (and if you drop the 'h'), the name is a racist term in the UK at least.

One more casualty of the absence of retroflex consonants in English. Before you jumped the gun, you should’ve taken into account the difference between ‘Ka’ and ‘kha’ consonants.

Erm, I think you are confusing retroflex consonants with aspirated consonants. "Kha" is just the aspirated version of "Ka". English doesn't have two different alphabets for these two different sounds and which one is used depends on the context (king vs sink). Indic languages on the other hand treat these as completely different sounds and there are many pairs of words which differ only in the non-aspiration/aspiration of one particular alphabet.

Interestingly, even though the IPA has the aspiration modifier letter, the transcriptions that you find in dictionaries seldom care to use them. For instance, the Cambridge dictionary lists the pronunciation of the word king as /kɪŋ/ but almost everyone actually says /kʰɪn/.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/king

Re: Show HN: Pakhi – Bangla Programming Language

#48

Post by alex_smart »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #30
yowlingcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ignorant statement. Pakhi means "bird" in Bengali. Check the translation. Edit: To all the downvoters, I truly hope that ignorance is bliss for you. Maybe learn another language before you project your ressentiment tinged identity-politics idiocy onto something you don't even understand. [1] https://translate.google.com/?sl=bn&tl=en&text=pakhi&op=tran...

You're probably being downvoted for the 1st sentence. And for the Edit. Why is it ignorant? OP is just stating a fact. Is OP the PC police, or is he the canary trying to warn that the "cancel mob" might attack this project if they took offense at the name, I can't tell. You saying it means "bird" is also just a fact...

It is ignorant because the concern stems from ignorance of the fact that many languages that are used by billions of people in the world treat the aspirated and non-aspirated versions of consonants as completely different consonants.
Post reply on HN