this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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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
65 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] Bysmuth@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago (3 children)

"All languages (that use the Latin alphabet) have the same alphabetical sorting order." oh this one is very unexpected to me. Does someone know an example? I'm curious

[–] Ebber@lemmings.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

In Denmark we have the digraph "aa" that is the same as "å". Since "å" is the last letter in the Danish alphabet, "aa" must be sorted likewise. Hence the ordering Aalborg -> Allerup -> Middelfart is incorrect and the correct ordering is Allerup -> Middelfart -> Aalborg.

The exception is if two a's are pronounced as separate vowels e.g. due to compounding words: "ekstra" + "arbejde" gives "ekstraarbejde" but here it is not pronounced as "å" so ekstraarbejde -> ekstrabetaling is correct ordering as well

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet

[–] zerofk@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Middelfart? :-D

[–] DelightfullyDivisive@discuss.online 3 points 2 days ago

It's not too smelly, but it's not completely benign either.

[–] b_van_b@programming.dev 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Many examples are listed on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order#Language-specific_conventions

For French, the last accent in a given word determines the order.[14] For example, in French, the following four words would be sorted this way: cote < côte < coté < côté. The letter e is ordered as e é è ê ë (œ considered as oe), same thing for o as ô ö.

[–] wieson@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

In German Ä comes after A, in Swedish Ä comes after Z