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The Ugly American Programmer

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Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#31

Post by yummyfajitas »

pmarin wrote: post #16

Eric Raymond: it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job Or probably English is simply the most easy to learn.

I don't think english is easier to learn, just more fault tolerant. We are used to translating bad english and have no trouble with statements like this:

In the early part of the 1950's in the USA, a game called "Violence Fight" was in vogue among mafia, reckless drivers and general businessmen. The "Violence Fight" was the game to struggle for "No. 1 Quarreler" with fighters who were gathered from all parts of the USA speaking boastingly of their strength. And of course a lot of winning money as well as the honor were given to the "winner".

(Example taken from here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqnBWgrSt30). Other languages (e.g. french) just don't tolerate stuff like this.

For an example of a really easy to learn language, see modern Turkish. For various reasons (vacations and chicks) I've tried and failed to learn many languages. I came closest with turkish, vocabulary was my only sticking point. Ataturk simplified the language only 70 years ago, and it worked fantastically well.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#32

Post by aristus »

likpok wrote: post #27
pmarin wrote: post #16

Eric Raymond: it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job Or probably English is simply the most easy to learn.

Well, English does have a larger technical vocabulary than most other languages. Admittedly, this is more because English accepts other languages technical words into the language, so therefore (to some extent) is the union of the technical language. With this in mind, i would not call English easy to learn. There are far too many special cases and bizarre twists to get to true fluency (it might be east to get to a p…

It's both, I think. Basic grammar is fairly easy and succinct. But then there are 60K phrasal verbs (stand up, stand down, understand, stand under, stand over, but never "overstand") and special cases, connotations, figures of speech, etc.

It's difficult to explain to a learner why it is technically correct but not usual to say "This is my election for lunch", or why a "hot chick" goes to college while a "hot chicken" is dinner.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#33

Post by aristus »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #31
pmarin wrote: post #16

Eric Raymond: it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job Or probably English is simply the most easy to learn.

I don't think english is easier to learn, just more fault tolerant. We are used to translating bad english and have no trouble with statements like this: In the early part of the 1950's in the USA, a game called "Violence Fight" was in vogue among mafia, reckless drivers and general businessmen. The "Violence Fight" was the game to struggle for "No. 1 Quarreler" with fighters who were gathered from all parts of the U…

That's a very good point! I've never thought of it that way. Most corrections are of that nature. I know what someone means, more or less, but the arrangement or words are slightly off.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#34

Post by tokenadult »

patio11 wrote: post #30

This post gives me the overpowering urge to write a rebuttal in Japanese just to prove that an American can. Let me hum a few bars: if your customers don't speak English, and your colleagues don't speak English, and your business partners don't speak English, then your refusal to use languages other than English cannot be justified by it being efficient . It is hubris to think otherwise -- an arrogant sort of lazines…

This post gives me the overpowering urge to write a rebuttal in Japanese just to prove that an American can.

I'd love to try my hand at reading it. Chinese is my stronger language, but I can read a lot of Japanese for meaning.

Agreeing with your point that everyone, especially a native speaker of English, is well advised to learn the language of customers, I still agree with Jeff's main point that if we want an interlanguage (a "lingua franca") for programming, that language will have to be English for the foreseeable future. Not because Japanese and Chinese and Korean people are unimportant, but for the same reason that Japanese and Chinese and Korean people very often use English for conversations among themselves that include no native speakers of English--an interlanguage gains usefulness from network effects, and English dominates all other conceivable choices of an interlanguage in its network advantages.

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Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#35

Post by sethg »

I am suddenly reminded of how, after a few months studying in an Israeli religious school, I switched my note-taking from English to Hebrew--not because I was terribly fluent in Hebrew, but because the books I was studying (canonical Jewish texts) were in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the terms used to refer to concepts in them were Hebrew, and it was just easier to write everything in Hebrew than to think about how to translate or transliterate all the vocabulary into English. Especially since the equivalent English words all took longer to write.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#36

Post by tokenadult »

wheels wrote: post #20
mpk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. English is not my native language but I just do everything in English. Code, documentation, blogs, requirement docs, etc. Really, everything. Is this even remotely controversial these days?

I don't think so within the EU (perhaps in France ... chuckle), but I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China.

I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China.

Linguist David Crystal, who has surveyed world use of one or another "interlanguage" for official use by international organizations, has found that actually most frequent and most exclusive use of English as an interlanguage is in east Asia. It is remarkably "natural" for a Korean person to try speaking English to a Japanese person (even though Korean and Japanese are cognate languages), and it is more expected still for a Chinese person to speak with either of them in English. What I find remarkable, but have observed more than once, is speakers of different Sinitic languages ("Chinese dialects") speaking to one another in English. Online, which is mostly the context Jeff is talking about in his blog, the early inconvenience of typing in the CJK languages (now resolved, as an in-country issue, but still a big barrier to switching among those languages) resulted in much Internet communication in east Asia being in English by default.

After edit: France was mentioned in the reply above to which I reply here, and I'll mention that the Carrefour retail chain has stores in Taiwan, and the signs inside the stores are in Chinese, of course, but also in English, NOT in French. There is no reason of national pride among the Carrefour staff sufficient to overcome the practicality of using English to reach customers in Taiwan. (Taiwan has a large population of English-speaking foreigners, the plurality of whom are Philippine guest workers.)

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#37

Post by bdittmer »

patio11 wrote: post #30

This post gives me the overpowering urge to write a rebuttal in Japanese just to prove that an American can. Let me hum a few bars: if your customers don't speak English, and your colleagues don't speak English, and your business partners don't speak English, then your refusal to use languages other than English cannot be justified by it being efficient . It is hubris to think otherwise -- an arrogant sort of lazines…

Did you read the article? He's talking about internal engineering efforts, not gathering requirements and general interactions with the customer.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#38

Post by wheels »

tokenadult wrote: post #36
wheels wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so within the EU (perhaps in France ... chuckle), but I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China.

I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China. Linguist David Crystal, who has surveyed world use of one or another "interlanguage" for official use by international organizations, has found that actually most frequent and most exclusive use of English as an interlanguage is in east Asia. It is remarkably "natural" for a Korean person to try speaking English to a Japanese person (even thoug…

Is that most frequent per capita or total occurrences?

At least with the limited contact I've had with Chinese and Japanese developers the level of English wasn't particularly high, so I guess I'm a bit surprised by that. In the Chinese teams they even went as far as to try to suck in someone from Hong Kong so that he could be the bridge between the Chinese and German (the team I was on, though communicating in English) groups.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#39

Post by nandemo »

tokenadult wrote: post #36
wheels wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so within the EU (perhaps in France ... chuckle), but I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China.

I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China. Linguist David Crystal, who has surveyed world use of one or another "interlanguage" for official use by international organizations, has found that actually most frequent and most exclusive use of English as an interlanguage is in east Asia. It is remarkably "natural" for a Korean person to try speaking English to a Japanese person (even thoug…

I understand that the parent poster's point is that most East Asian software engineers don't speak English well.

Now, given that a Japanese and a Korean are to communicate, of course it's more likely that they will do so in English.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#40

Post by davidw »

wheels wrote: post #20
mpk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. English is not my native language but I just do everything in English. Code, documentation, blogs, requirement docs, etc. Really, everything. Is this even remotely controversial these days?

I don't think so within the EU (perhaps in France ... chuckle), but I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China.

Even here in Italy, which doesn't have a strong tradition of using English, most programmers use it (although I am currently working on a Rails contract where all the models have been translated into Italian, with the accompanying pain that that brings...)
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