this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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Programming
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I'm not disagreeing outright but... Why do we need more non English programming languages? Is there a specific practical reason?
The only language translation I'd maybe consider to accept in programming is Esperanto. Anything else just sounds like a terrible idea.
Why esperanto?
It's a neutral, easily accessible language. Having it in programming could incentivize more people to learn it as well.
English has become the defacto lingua franca. I’d argue that Esperanto is less accessible than English, because barely anyone knowns it.
I agree completely. The discussion was what we replace English with however.
I'm not in favor of replacing English, I'm just saying if we want an alterantive I don't want it to be a nation-specific language again, so to speak.
The problem with Esperanto is that it's still very euro centric. I might nonetheless be willing to learn it, just because I get a kick out of watching native English speakers trying to speak a foreign language
Esperanto is eurocentric, because it's international. Because romance languages where made by colonialism of the roman empire. The argument goes of "equality". Thinking the other way around would be that asiatic languages colonized the world, then Esperanto would be based on asiatic languages.
Esperanto is a pragmatic language, not a "totally neutral" language. If you design a language to be "totally neutral" then parts would be distributed differently. How to chose which vocabulary of languages should be used often?
So using romance languages is a pragmatic solution to this. Through usage words can be added or fall out of use, all that is allowed in Esperanto and which can make the language out of colonialism in the future more egalitarian.
But it's ignorant to ignore Esperanto at all and morally vilifying it as "eurocentric therefore bad".
Every book is not "accessible", when it's not even opened and willfully ignored of existing.
There is:
There are languages to which it's less accessible, but from the bigger ones, it's quiet accessible.
But if people don't open their eyes they don't see the forest in which they are standing.