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submitted 3 days ago by dessalines@lemmy.ml to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 158 points 3 days ago

I think this thread is meant to flatter programmers and make linguists and sociologists extremely angry.

[-] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 days ago

How so? Except the first sentence which is obviously not serious, I would agree with all linguistic statements or at least not disagree with any.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 4 points 3 days ago

I mean, French is vulgar Latin at best. And even if it wasn't obviously spoken by all sorts of French people, elites or not, it's also the official language of a bunch of other countries, from Monaco to Niger. "Elites and certain circles" is a very weird read, which I'm guessing is based on US stereotypes on the French? I don't even think the British would commit to associating the French with elitism.

Russian speakers being "mostly autoritarian left" is also... kind of a lot to assume? I'm not even getting into that one further. I don't know if the Esperanto one checks out, either. "Esperanto speaker" is the type of group, and this is true, whose wikipedia page doesn't include statistics but instead just a list of names. Which is hilarious, but maybe not a great Python analogue. It may still be the best pairing there, because to my knowledge English speakers aren't any worse at speaking English than the speakers of any other language. They are more monolingual, though.

It just all sounds extremely anglocentric to me, which is what it is, I suppose, but it really messes with the joke if you're joking about languages specifically. One could do better with this concept, I think.

[-] Wiz@midwest.social 1 points 2 days ago

About Esperanto, since it's not a national language (intentionally so) it's hard to do a census of speakers.

Also, to what level is considered "speaking Esperanto"? Taking the Duolingo course? Having it as a "mother tongue" where both parents speak it in a household in order to communicate? These are both probably countable, and produce wildly different numbers.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago

I'll be honest, I don't think that's the reason. I also think those numbers may be different but they may both be indistinguishable from zero when plotted against natural languages. You're right about it being hard to define what counts as a "Esperanto speaker". I can't decide if that makes the Python comparison better or worse, though.

[-] Wiz@midwest.social 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I do not think Python is a very good comparison.

I was thinking more like Clojure:

Enthusiastic and friendly geeks trying to push their language on the world trying to make it a better place. They are both definitely not a little cultish!
Language intended to be simple to learn with a limited and regular vocabulary, but can handle complicated work with ease.
They both say that learning their language will make your mind better able to do other languages.
A bridge between languages. Vanilla Clojure runs on the JVM and can invoke Java commands. But it has also been built on other platforms like JavaScript (ClojureScript), .NET (CLR), Python (Basilisp), BASH (Babashka), and others I think.
The parts of both languages can be broken up, mixed, and matched, and used for other parts. In Esperanto, the fundamental elements can be broken down and made into other words. In Clojure, you've got functions and lists - and higher order functions that work on functions and lists, and lists of functions, and functions of lists.
Did I mention: Friendly & welcoming geeks that lo-o-o-ove newbies! Seriously, both Clojure nerds and Esperanto nerds are unnaturally nice and would like to welcome you to the club. They've got tons of free resources for you to learn it.

Honestly, I think both are right. Both are simple languages that expand your way of thinking, and are probably both worth learning, if you're into that sort of thing.