In article <d99sdj$n77$1@digitaldaemon.com>, a.c.edwards says...
>My question is when will you translate your programs into other languages so that local programmers of those languages will be comfortable reading them? What says they have to learn your language? They've gone through the trouble of writing something for themselves, and making it freely available for your use. When will you even attempt to learn reading it? Are you saying the Japanese are smarter than your are? They can atleast read English but you will never be able to read or speak Japanese!
>
>Get over yourself! Maybe after you have spent the time learning their language and translating your code so that they may have a simpler time reading it, you can try posting your question again.
>
>Andrew
>a.k.a. Tyro


Why are you mad at me? I respect Japanese language as any other and even more because I admire Japanese and eastern culutures. My native language is not English also. What I say is in English D stuff will be more accessible. I didn't make english so popular. But it think it is good language and I even believe it is better than my own because it is easy expandable. But I still repsect my language and avoid using english where possible. Of course it is possible to write D in my language but I preffer, because I am able to read/write English, to make my stuff more accessible so more people can benefit from it. And I am not judging anyone who doesn't share my opion unlike you.

> They can atleast read English but you will never be able
>to read or speak Japanese!

This is not true. In fact I have big desire to learn Japanese language and culture. When I have enough money to travel I wish to go to Japan and not just on vacation...

Brian Hay wrote:

> On 21/06/2005 4:31 AM, bobef wrote:
> 
>> I see there is a lot of high quality D stuff on some japanese sites... This is
>> cool but why not in english?
> 
> 
>> In my opinion we should make our D
>> things more "accessible" to help the development of D, and english is kind-of
>> international language... This is my opinion of course...
> 
> 
> I'm a native English speaker and don't (unfortunately) know any other spoken languages, but it sometimes concerns me that English has become the "must know" defacto standard language in the technology sector especially. It must be really difficult for non-English speakers to understand the many subtleties and ambiguities in English in order to fully grasp a programming language and utilise code libraries etc.
> 
> It would be nice to have a simple, "universal" non-aligned language like Esperanto in regular use but then again I'm an idealist ...
> 
> Brian.

Why does this concern you?  Many different Computer technologies were created and rose to prominence in English speaking countries.

Are you concerned that sheet music is full of Italian?  It is for the same reasons I mentioned...

-DavidM

On 23/06/2005 2:41 AM, David Medlock wrote:

> Why does this concern you?  Many different Computer technologies were created and rose to prominence in English speaking countries.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't suggesting a change in D or anything else and my post was very off-topic. Sorry. It was just a hypothetical "what if" ideal world scenario. I understand the historical reasons for the dominance of English, and as an English speaker I can't complain, but the idealist/politically correct part of me says "English as the dominant language for the Internet and technology smacks of cultural imperialism". Just trying to put myself in the shoes of the majority of the world's population that *doesn't* speak English as a first language, and shouldn't be expected to learn all its many idiosyncrasies in order to fully utilise today's information technology.

What prompted my renewed interest in Esperanto and other "artificial" languages was a recent business trip to Korea. The people I met there were quite surprised at my lack of knowledge of Esperanto in particular. They seemed to think that it was a common thing (courtesy?) to learn something like Esperanto to ease cross-border communication and understanding (although one of the group spoke reasonably fluent English also, so he acted as translator). I got the distinct impression that they (the Koreans) are proud of what they can do and quite rightly would rather reinvent the wheel for themselves than use a "western wheel".

On a side note, apparently the UN and EU parliament spend billions a year on translation services. A common, non-aligned language for diplomacy (other than the traditional French), would save a lot of money and maybe reduce misunderstanding and promote international cooperation.

And to answer florian:

> Esperanto is rather easy for european speakers, because it has been created to
> be very similar to what they have in common. But it is not any easier for, say,
> japanese people.

True, Esperanto is more European than Asian in origin, but it is much easier to learn with only a 1000 or so roots that combine in unambiguous ways, as opposed to English's 10,000 or more roots with many, many ambiguities and inconsistencies.

Brian.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:45:50 +1000, Brian Hay wrote:


> True, Esperanto is more European than Asian in origin, but it is much easier to learn with only a 1000 or so roots that combine in unambiguous ways, as opposed to English's 10,000 or more roots with many, many ambiguities and inconsistencies.

Just for your interest, there are many alternatives to Esperanto. One of the more interesting ones is Ido ( http://members.aol.com/idolinguo/ ) It is still very European influenced, which is a shame because the Asian and African languages have a lot of great things to recommend them (I learned Thai and also spent some time in South Africa, so I suppose I'm a bit biased.)

-- 
Derek
Melbourne, Australia
23/06/2005 10:57:01 AM

I can read Esperanto and I have nothing against a D guide in Esperanto! I could even help with translations! ;-)

In article <d9d0nu$959$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Brian Hay says...
>
>On 23/06/2005 2:41 AM, David Medlock wrote:
>
>> Why does this concern you?  Many different Computer technologies were created and rose to prominence in English speaking countries.
>
>Don't get me wrong. I wasn't suggesting a change in D or anything else and my post was very off-topic. Sorry. It was just a hypothetical "what if" ideal world scenario. I understand the historical reasons for the dominance of English, and as an English speaker I can't complain, but the idealist/politically correct part of me says "English as the dominant language for the Internet and technology smacks of cultural imperialism". Just trying to put myself in the shoes of the majority of the world's population that *doesn't* speak English as a first language, and shouldn't be expected to learn all its many idiosyncrasies in order to fully utilise today's information technology.
>
>What prompted my renewed interest in Esperanto and other "artificial" languages was a recent business trip to Korea. The people I met there were quite surprised at my lack of knowledge of Esperanto in particular. They seemed to think that it was a common thing (courtesy?) to learn something like Esperanto to ease cross-border communication and understanding (although one of the group spoke reasonably fluent English also, so he acted as translator). I got the distinct impression that they (the Koreans) are proud of what they can do and quite rightly would rather reinvent the wheel for themselves than use a "western wheel".
>
>On a side note, apparently the UN and EU parliament spend billions a year on translation services. A common, non-aligned language for diplomacy (other than the traditional French), would save a lot of money and maybe reduce misunderstanding and promote international cooperation.
>
>And to answer florian:
>
>> Esperanto is rather easy for european speakers, because it has been created to be very similar to what they have in common. But it is not any easier for, say, japanese people.
>
>True, Esperanto is more European than Asian in origin, but it is much easier to learn with only a 1000 or so roots that combine in unambiguous ways, as opposed to English's 10,000 or more roots with many, many ambiguities and inconsistencies.
>
>Brian.

On 23/06/2005 11:01 AM, Derek Parnell wrote:

> Just for your interest, there are many alternatives to Esperanto. One of
> the more interesting ones is Ido ( http://members.aol.com/idolinguo/ )

Thanks for the link.

BTW: You can't tell from my email address, but I'm Australian too :-) Good to see another Aussie on this list.

Brian,
Brisbane, QLD, AU

Brian Hay wrote:
> On 23/06/2005 2:41 AM, David Medlock wrote:

> What prompted my renewed interest in Esperanto and other "artificial" languages was a recent business trip to Korea. The people I met there were quite surprised at my lack of knowledge of Esperanto in particular. They seemed to think that it was a common thing (courtesy?) to learn something like Esperanto to ease cross-border communication and understanding (although one of the group spoke reasonably fluent English also, so he acted as translator). I got the distinct impression that they (the Koreans) are proud of what they can do and quite rightly would rather reinvent the wheel for themselves than use a "western wheel".

I think you stumbled upon a minority. I've been living in Korea for 15 years now and have been able to maintain a nice income as a part time English instructor. English is big business here. Samsung maintains a permanent staff of native speakers for both instruction and for promotion evaluations (senior level positions require a high English proficiency). Most of the major conglomerates do the same, with training facilities set up outside of Seoul. And a large number of small and mid-size businesses encourage their employees to take English lessongs. Then there are English language institutes which cater to both adults and children. And there's a huge market for private tutoring. The demand for English lessons is, in fact, much higher than the supply of native speakers. Chinese is also big here now that Korean companies are expanding in China.

There's been some debate in the Korean government on declaring English Korea's official 'second language'. Almost anywhere you go in Korea you can find people who speak enough English well enough to have simple conversations. In Japan, my experience has been much different. But I've not heard of Esperanto before, in either country. Perhaps I'll look in to it.

><snip>
>> I am not a native english speaker (french if you must know) but I disagree. If there must be one international language (and  i do think it is usefull), why try to use one like esperanto which has no native speaker? It just becomes a problem for more people. Besides, esperanto is NOT easier to learn than english. Difficulty of a language basicly comes down to how similar it is to one you already speak.
>
>Which is the greater factor in determining ease of learning a language - simplicity or similarity?

Basicaly speaking, there is no such thing as simplicity. Declinations are difficult to learn? yes, because you don't have them in your language. Learning a language without declinations if your native tongue have is not necessarily easy. There are lots of thing you could do thanks to the declinations that you have to learn a different way, and you get a more constrained word order. Some languages do not make any difference between adjectives and (state) verbs. Is that more simple or more complicated? I'd say neither. just different. The only place where I'd say there is indeed a difference of difficulty between languages is writing, and more specificaly learning the characters and spelling.

>
>> Esperanto is rather easy for european speakers, because it has been created to be very similar to what they have in common. But it is not any easier for, say, japanese people.
>
>It would appear that Zamenhof wasn't so familiar with the workings of many non-European languages.
>
>Loglan and Lojban, OTOH, have been described as more culturally neutral, since they have somewhat less in common with natural languages.  And presumably a more balanced collection of vocabulary sources....

Having more balanced vocabulary sources means including some chinese-based words to please the asians, since lots of languages there borrow from it. But then it makes it harder for europeans. If you try to be fair to every one, you'll end with a highly heterogen vocabulary that not only will contain a lot of words foreign to any speakers (not the same words for every one, but still), but also will be less coherent in relation between words, and therefore harder to learn.

And for the grammar, you get problems too. should your languages have tenses or not? should the object complement come before or after the verb. should there even be such a thing as an object complement? should the verb ending (or beginin?) change with the tense, or with the level of politness, or not at all? and so on. Whatever you choose, the natural languages are so diverse that some features will always be foreign (and therefore hard to grasp) for some group or another.

So you can either pick up features in all the languages of the world, and end up with something hard for every body, or make it easy for the  one group (say romance languages : italian spanish portugese romanian) and harder for the others. But in that second case, why not just pickup one of the natural languages of that group? it already has the features you want, and will be already known by a lot of people.

And if you chose than language from a dominant (economicaly, culturaly, militarly, or whatever) civilisation of the moment, you don't even have to convince people to learn it. They will need it to communicate with thoses dominant people. and they are also likely to make a lot of borrowing to their native language, somewhat briding the vocabulary gap.

>> More over, the best way to learn a language is to practice. You need to read book, or watch movies, or stay in a country where it is spoken... None of which is really an option for artificial languages, because there are no such country, and the material in these language is bound to be far more limited than in a natural language.
><snip>
>
>True.  But ATMS Esperanto has quite a body of both original and translated literature.

Sure. But are research papers published in esperanto? international agreements? business contracts? TV news? latest holliwood movie?

This won't happen unless esperanto is already a dominant language in the world. Which wont happen if esperanto is not needed to do international stuff as mentioned above. You got a hen and egg problem here, which makes me say except that a few language enthousiasts, no one is ever going to learn esperanto for the sake of communication.

But don't get me wrong. I love artificial languages. They are a wonderfull thing for linguistic research, for fiction (think of klingon, or elvish), or for art(poetry). But for international communication, I do not believe that they are a solution. Not even an improvement.

Florian

<t@t.com> wrote in message news:MPG.1d22a6621640fd55989683@news.digitalmars.com...
>   The more interesting question is to how D got to have
> a following in .jp, I'm thinking that there must have
> been someone who knows english and japanese who was a
> bit of an evangelist for D.

I'm feeling a bit of deja-vu over this, because Japanese programmers were the earliest adopters of my original compiler back in the '80s in a big way (the Japanese distributor's name was MSA).

In the late '80s I spend some time in Japan porting software to the Japanese PCs (which had different BIOS's, keyboards, and video controllers). I had a wonderful time working with Japanese engineers. Puzzling through the Japanese technical manuals wasn't that hard, as engineering jargon is the same everywhere. When we weren't working, they'd take me on tours through the countryside, and on tour through some of the most incredible restaurants.

So I couldn't be happier to see a thriving Japanese D community.

Besides, there's google's japanese->english translator!

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 21:55:46 -0700, Walter <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> <t@t.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1d22a6621640fd55989683@news.digitalmars.com...
>>   The more interesting question is to how D got to have
>> a following in .jp, I'm thinking that there must have
>> been someone who knows english and japanese who was a
>> bit of an evangelist for D.
>
> I'm feeling a bit of deja-vu over this, because Japanese programmers were
> the earliest adopters of my original compiler back in the '80s in a big way
> (the Japanese distributor's name was MSA).
>
> In the late '80s I spend some time in Japan porting software to the Japanese
> PCs (which had different BIOS's, keyboards, and video controllers). I had a
> wonderful time working with Japanese engineers. Puzzling through the
> Japanese technical manuals wasn't that hard, as engineering jargon is the
> same everywhere. When we weren't working, they'd take me on tours through
> the countryside, and on tour through some of the most incredible
> restaurants.
>
> So I couldn't be happier to see a thriving Japanese D community.
>
> Besides, there's google's japanese->english translator!

Go the "Death Tractor" (a.k.a destructor)

Regan