Computers and Languages

[Dimandja]

Do you find it difficult to hold an IT conversation in a language other than English? For example, I usually speak French with my family, but when the conversation is about computers, we automatically switch to English without giving it a second thought.

Are computers contributing to the spread of the English language in all corners of the world? I heard from a friend who learned programming in the russian navy, that English courses were prerequisites for programming classes.

Dimandja

 

[sleipnir214]

I think you are right.

Most of the early development in computers was performed by English-speaking people in the UK and the US, so the literature was in English.

There's also the fact that most computer languages borrow their command tokens from English: BASIC's "print" command, for example.

Then there is just the structure of the English language. Since English doesn't support noun genders, you don't have to worry about the gender of a created noun -- not a problem in German, which supports the neuter gender, but a problem for Romance languages which only have masculine and feminine. The same holds true for the simplified grammar of the language -- the limited number of cases, etc.

The fact that English has so many import words from other languages lends it the ability to accept technical argot words readily -- English speakers are used to hearing exotic-sounding words. There is also no English-language equivalent to an organization like the Academie Francais which would take exception to certain import words' being "insufficiently English".


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TANSTAAFL!!

 

[CajunCenturion]

It's not just computers. English is also the worldwide language of aviation.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Dimandja]

L'Academie Francaise will single-handedly drive that language into obsolescence.

A few years ago I saw a French-English Computer dictionary. Some of the translations were quite improbable.

However, French web sites are very much English oriented - no doubt to the chagrin of the academie.

Dimandja

 

[ChrisHunt]

I find it difficult to hold a conversation on any subject in a language other than English, and I'm an above-average linguist by the abyssmal standards of the UK.

I heard somewhere that there is a UN agreement that allocated particular languages to particular subject areas. The official language of computer networking is French, for example. Of course in such a highly commercialised field as computing, English tends to elbow the official academic language out of the way.

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk