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Falsehoods programmers believe about languages (www.lexiconista.com)

submitted 3 days ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/programming@programming.dev

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I can’t believe nobody has done this list yet. I mean, there is one about names, one about time and many others on other topics, but not one about languages yet (except one honorable mention that comes close). So, here’s my attempt to list all the misconceptions and prejudices I’ve come across in the course of my long and illustrious career in software localisation and language technology. Enjoy – and send me your own ones!

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[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (19 children)

Most of these just seem like basic educational issues except this one imo:

Every language has words for yes and no.

I want to see more than like 1 or 2 counterexamples. I'm pretty interested in linguistics on an amateur level. Don't believe I've heard of that one before now.

edit: in retrospect I do think I remember hearing this about Irish and Latin and some older languages. Interesting to know there are so many. I know the theory that language is related to thought patterns is semi-debunked, but I can't help but think that things like this indicate something about the cultures associated with a language.

[–] bkhl@social.sdfeu.org 6 points 3 days ago (4 children)

@TrickDacy @rimu but use them much more restrictively. As an example in Thai, "yes" is "chai", but is used only in a few situations, like if a question is ended with "chai mai" (yes followed by word forming polar question).

In interfaces you can't usually put this as yes/no buttons, but rather usually one is a verb like "khao" ("come/go in") and the other is the same word prefixed with mai ("not", different tone from the other "mai" i mentioned).

Chinese is similar but I don't know it as well.

[–] bkhl@social.sdfeu.org 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

@TrickDacy @rimu another example is Irish, which I've heard claim as an explanation for Irish English also contains more of "it is/isn't" and such constructs in favour of yes no.

Another European example is Finnish which has yes but not no. You want me to go on?

[–] bkhl@social.sdfeu.org 3 points 3 days ago

@TrickDacy @rimu guess I should have mentioned Latin as well, which is a bit interesting. Latin didn't have yes/no, but a lot of modern romance languages does, where things like "si" and "oui" derive from Latin words that had other meanings.

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