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Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

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Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#21

Post by Cyph0n »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #5
blue1 wrote: post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

No, that crown would almost certainly go to one of the variants of APL, which have more operators than ASCII has symbols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)

I've always thought that if you learn one programming language, you can probably pick up any other language quite easily, except for APL/J/K.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#22

Post by jpatokal »

johansch wrote: post #13

Every time I hear Thai language spoken I'm reminded that this tonal language inspired the creators of "Mars attacks" to what the fictional language used by the aliens should sound like, just because it sounded so alien. I have to say though that the Thai language can be spoken relatively calmly and soothingly, but when spoken by in anger or in a particular kind of formality, it sounds quite similar to the language us…

Since English is (largely) not tonal, you're not used to the rapid pitch changes required by tonal languages, hence the "alien" feel. For what it's worth, I find Thai quite euphoneous compared to Vietnamese or Cantonese, both of which have even more tones.

Question for HN: if your first language is tonal, what do non-tonal languages sound like to you? I've frequently heard Finnish described as boring/mumbling, because it's both non-tonal and has a very predictable stress pattern (emphasis always on the first syllable).

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#23

Post by johansch »

jpatokal wrote: post #22
johansch wrote: post #13

Every time I hear Thai language spoken I'm reminded that this tonal language inspired the creators of "Mars attacks" to what the fictional language used by the aliens should sound like, just because it sounded so alien. I have to say though that the Thai language can be spoken relatively calmly and soothingly, but when spoken by in anger or in a particular kind of formality, it sounds quite similar to the language us…

Since English is (largely) not tonal, you're not used to the rapid pitch changes required by tonal languages, hence the "alien" feel. For what it's worth, I find Thai quite euphoneous compared to Vietnamese or Cantonese, both of which have even more tones. Question for HN: if your first language is tonal, what do non-tonal languages sound like to you? I've frequently heard Finnish described as boring/mumbling, becaus…

My native language is Swedish, not English. They are both quite closely related though.

I'm really curious to that Swedish sounds like to tonal-language people. It's often described as "sing-songy" by "non-tonal" people from e.g. UK/US.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#24

Post by throwaway7645 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #5
blue1 wrote: post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

No, that crown would almost certainly go to one of the variants of APL, which have more operators than ASCII has symbols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)

Perl6 can be written as beautifully as any language, but can also be written to look similar to APL (more so than P5), but obviously not as terse as APL.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#25

Post by evincarofautumn »

zzleeper wrote: post #7
DasIch wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl might have a lot of operators but Haskell's ability to define your own operators leads to a ton of operators in the standard library and third party packages.

That's one of the things keeping me away from Haskell. It seems that to be proficient I would need to know way more beyond the "standard library", but go into the String vs Text debates, and the huge amounts of common knowledge out there.

Except for Lens, most packages shy away from operator soup. The basic set you need to know to read most Haskell code is quite small, and tied to the core concepts you need to know anyway, such as:

    Functor ()
    Applicative (, )
    Monad (>>=, ==>, )
    Alternative ()

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#26

Post by laylomo »

johansch wrote: post #23
jpatokal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since English is (largely) not tonal, you're not used to the rapid pitch changes required by tonal languages, hence the "alien" feel. For what it's worth, I find Thai quite euphoneous compared to Vietnamese or Cantonese, both of which have even more tones. Question for HN: if your first language is tonal, what do non-tonal languages sound like to you? I've frequently heard Finnish described as boring/mumbling, becaus…

My native language is Swedish, not English. They are both quite closely related though. I'm really curious to that Swedish sounds like to tonal-language people. It's often described as "sing-songy" by "non-tonal" people from e.g. UK/US.

It's because of words like anden and andEN. That second version is sing-songy because it has two stresses.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#27

Post by nv-vn »

Cyph0n wrote: post #21
JoshTriplett wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that crown would almost certainly go to one of the variants of APL, which have more operators than ASCII has symbols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)

I've always thought that if you learn one programming language, you can probably pick up any other language quite easily, except for APL/J/K.

Many claim that Haskell is easiest to learn as a first language.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#28

Post by nv-vn »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #25
zzleeper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the things keeping me away from Haskell. It seems that to be proficient I would need to know way more beyond the "standard library", but go into the String vs Text debates, and the huge amounts of common knowledge out there.

Except for Lens, most packages shy away from operator soup. The basic set you need to know to read most Haskell code is quite small, and tied to the core concepts you need to know anyway, such as: Functor ( ) Applicative ( , ) Monad (>>=, = =>, ) Alternative ( )

Also ++, $, ., and some others. But yeah, you don't need to know too many to be able to read 90% of Haskell code.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#29

Post by Cyph0n »

nv-vn wrote: post #27
Cyph0n wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that if you learn one programming language, you can probably pick up any other language quite easily, except for APL/J/K.

Many claim that Haskell is easiest to learn as a first language.

I don't know Haskell, but from what I've seen, it doesn't look like a beginner-friendly language. I think Python is the undisputed king of introductory languages.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#30

Post by Nzen »

UhUhUhUh wrote: post #16

On a side note (!), I stumbled across that: http://qz.com/488701/humans-are-confusing-music-composed-by-... Which in turn made me wonder if we couldn't create a program that would translate code into music...

A spectrum of increasing respect for those ellipses:

https://github.com/debugger22/github-audio

https://github.com/Thomasb81/Midi_SynthFpga

http://overtone.github.io/

https://github.com/maximecb/Turing-Tunes

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