Ask Slashdot: 2nd Spoken/Written Language For Software Developer? 514
ichimunki writes "I am a mid-career software developer. I am from the Midwestern U.S. and my native language is English. I've studied a few languages over the years, both human and computer. Lately I've begun to wonder what is the best second (human) language for someone in this field to have. Or is there even any practical value in working to become fluent in a non-English language? I am not planning to travel or move/work abroad. But if I knew a second language, would I be able to participate in a larger programming community worldwide? Would I be able to work with those folks in some useful capacity? Perhaps building products for foreign markets?"
Russian (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My first language is UK English and I too faced the same "which next language to learn?" choice. After a lot of thought I chose Russian. China is such a massive trading partner and I can understand the arguments for selecting a Chinese language but the truth is that learning a language takes time and you have to predict what will be useful in the future rather than what would be useful right now. I've been amazed at the high quality of our outsourced Java development from Russia and and I'm betting that it
Re:Russian (Score:5, Interesting)
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we like our slavic languages like that, thank you very much ;) On the other hand they have nowhere near the amount of tenses English language has. As a Polish I can say it's a pain for us to learn the difference between simple past tense and present perfect (more or less collapsed into simple past), we don't have past perfect tense anymore and direct equivalents of continuous tenses feel awkward (words make sense but nobody would talk like that ever, simple tenses all the way). Also we don't use a/the thing
English is the most common second language (Score:3, Insightful)
for most programmers.
That's because most programmers don't have english as their first language.
Re:English is the most common second language (Score:5, Funny)
Thats right most have C as there first language
Well, of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
About all I'd say is: Pick a language mostly-unrelated to your own. Bonus points if you expect to have coworkers who speak it natively.
I see a comment saying it won't help you to learn a second language. I am unpersuaded. I generally find that anything I do which makes me more flexible makes me a better programmer. Being able to think in another language can be really useful for shaking up some of your presuppositions and assumptions. On the other hand, so can a philosophy degree.
I learned Chinese well enough to dream in it, and then mostly forgot it over the next decade or two. I still have an easier time understanding Chinese coworkers, because their English is often idiomatic for Chinese. But mostly... I am a more flexible person. I have concepts that there's a word for in Chinese and no word for in English. I learned to handle different ways of thinking about grammar. Overall, a good experience, and not one I regret. It's not as though it's a huge time sink; I'd guess I've spent more time playing video games in any given two-year period than I spent learning Chinese.
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My recommendation would be European Portuguese. Portuguese is one of the languages with most sounds (if you master it, you will be able to learn other languages much more easily), it's a very "mathematic" language (there are few exceptions in the language, the rules are very intuitive and predictable and once you get the hang of it, you can guess words you've never heard or read) and is considered by a lot of experts as one (if not the) of the most advanced languages. The fact that it is a very mathematic l
Don't do that (Score:5, Interesting)
No, please... Don't do that unless you're also culturally involved in your target market and actually understand the countries you write software for. Look at the whole "locales" mess. It works fine, if you have a single region with a single language, beyond that, it becomes very fishy... and $DIETY help you if you actually want an English system with date and time set to your geographical location. Language and regional settings should be entirely independent, but they aren't. On Linux, I found a workaround by just generating my own locales, but still.
I have worked on many multilingual projects, and I assure you: localization is not mere translation and translation is not merely swapping out strings with language. I would say, I can help on projects that to language for a sizeable part of Europe, but I am not good enough to include Asian languages, the Cyrillic typeset or even plain Greek.
While it's very interesting... I just wanted to warn you: you don't just walk into Localization.
Learn French (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
People confuse and depress me. (Score:4, Insightful)
The kind of questions that people end up asking seem to scream of "I'm so unsure about myself and what I want and I need somebody to tell me what to do". I just don't get it. These questions asked on Slashdot depress me.
Obviously, if you can and want to, do learn a language. And learn the one that makes the most sense wherever you go and whatever you do. Why are you asking others to tell you what to do?
I don't know how to speak it, but (Score:2)
I'd recommend perl.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd recommend perl.
Kinda like the guy in this video [youtube.com].
No specific answer (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say that for a software developer specifically there isn't a particular second language that would be useful, as the lingua franca in the software development world is already English. Even in non-English speaking countries it is common to write code and documentation in English, converse in English, etc.
So if you want to expand your potential I'd say choose a second language that's generally useful. If you want to limit it to your own geographic area I'd say Spanish. If you want the largest possible expansion of your potential market I'd say Mandarin Chinese.
Re: (Score:2)
But don't pick something based on computers. Chances are you'll never use it. Pick something you might be interested in, as you'll be more likely to learn it and use it. If you pick a language to try to further your computer career, you'll probably not learn
Let me google that one for you. (Score:2)
German (Score:3, Interesting)
Chinese or indian are the obvious answers, but they may be a bit too much.
I would go with German, because it is a fairly large language area (90 million + speakers) most of which belong to technologically advanced nations. As an alternative consider a latin language, such as Spanish.
Re:German (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Eastern Europe, second most sought after languate in IT is German.
Romanian is my first, and believe it or not, the other latin languages are easy to understand, English is second and German is third (which was harder to learn, but easier if you already know a little English).
Spanish (Score:4, Insightful)
You're American - you're going to need Spanish to sound like a local soon -
how else are you going to know what the guys and gals at the local store are saying behind your back.
but seriously - Chinese , Japanese , Korean , Finnish , German are all good starters
Re: (Score:3)
Spanish would be the first non-english language to pick if you are a native English speaker.
But understanding the Metric system is also important.
Spanish (Score:5, Interesting)
If I lived in the US I'd learn Spanish as a second language. It ought to be compulsory for all American school children. It's the second most spoken language in the U.S. It's the language of the majority of the Americas from Mexico down. And trends I don't see changing significantly seem to indicate it will only have a stronger presence in the U.S. over time. So that's what I'd focus on first, regardless of vocation.
Agreed (but not for tech reasons) (Score:3)
I agree that having some Spanish classes has helped me. As stated, it's the second most common language in the US. Plus, it's similar to other Romance languages, which makes it that much easier to understand those languages at least a little. I remember going to see Brotherhood of the Wolf [imdb.com], and simply knowing Spanish allowed me to get a basic idea of what they were saying in French. I was still glad to have the subtitles, but I didn't have to focus quite so much on reading them.
As a person in the Midwes
Re: (Score:3)
How would any language after English help him as a programmer? Whatever your answer it's also probably true for Spanish.
Top that off with it's the language he has the highest chance of gaining a high level of proficiency unless he lives in close proximity to a group that speaks something else - and he's willing to really engage with those people.
It's not easy to learn a language you don't use. In the US spanish is being used all over - at the fast food joint, on tv and radio, in his neighbors homes. It's on
Re: (Score:3)
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According to Wikipedia, Brazil (the only Portuguese speaking country) accounts for a little less than 50% of South America population [wikipedia.org]. Simplifying languages into nationalities, and considering the trends, it's safe to say that Spanish IS the most common language in SA.
I guess it depends on what number you use - I've seen as high as 205 million Brazilians out of 400 million total population of SA; so it floats somewhere around 50%. Of course, not all Brazilians speak Portuguese, just as all other SA don't necessarily speak Spanish. And some people would speak both. At any rate, either language would be useful in SA, to reply to the GP's comment; and teh notion taht many have that everyone south of the US Mexico border speaks Spanish is certainly not correct.
Do learn a second language, but not because of job (Score:2)
I speak Russian, English and I'm learning German. But what I've learned so far is that you don't need any human language except English to be a good programmer. Learning a second language won't improve your programming skills or your value, cause all other good programmers speak English.
On the other side, learning a second language allows you to develop your brains, improve your memory and to delay brain aging. Which language to learn depends on what time do you have and what language is easier for you to p
Neither Mandarin nor Hindi (Score:2)
No practical value... (Score:2)
Personally, if you aren't going to work outside the US, there is no practical value for a programmer, because it would greatly narrow down any other market.
Programming is like Air Traffic Control, for good or bad, everything is in English.
I have spent half my career outside the US (albiet mostly in English speaking countries) and from a development perspective, English is not optional. 99% of documentation is in English. Mastering another programming language would be more practical than another written/s
It's always good (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming from someone who has English as third language, I'd say you're fine without, since all documentation is available in English and most discussion is going on in English. I have actually never used my first or second language for participating in software community discussion. OTOH, these are minor languages with 6-10 million speakers worldwide, all of which learn English in school anyway.
However, among the worlds greater languages, there are certainly a lot of people who can't communicate well in English and there is a lot of discussion in these languages. So I would say, pick one major language that could be useful in all walks of life. Or just pick any language that you are interested in. However, for the sole purpose of participating in the programming community, I don't think time invested will pay off.
There are two crucial reasons for learning a language: necessity and personal motivation. If it isn't necessary for you, you'll have to go with motivation. So, pick a language that you want to learn, because you want to learn it.
Re: (Score:3)
Three is better than two (Score:2)
Pick an easy one (Score:3)
I would suggest a romance language: Spanish or Italian. If you start learning one of them, it will be relatively easy to switch to another one (e.g. if you suddenly start working with Brazilians and you already speak Spanish fluently, switching to Portuguese would take little effort). Also, both languages are easy to learn and are used in somewhat developed economies. A lot of development nowadays is outsourced to South America, so you can have practical use for it.
Finally, don't to what most people try to do: you can't learn a language from audiobooks or books. You will need to take classes - at least two or three times a week. A classroom setting is the second best way to learn a language. The best way to learn a language is a classroom setting in a country where that language is spoken by the majority of the people.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but there is effort in getting there. Grossly underestimated effort. I'm guessing > 90% of people who set their mind to learning a new language fail miserably.
There are several good options. (Score:3)
Chinese, Hindi or the like are tempting, but a lot of work to make real inroads, and in case you hadn't noticed, there really isn't a big percentage of quality software coming to the Western world from those places. I'm not implying anything, just stating facts.
There IS a lot of quality software coming out of Germany and the Russian Federation, though.
Think of where the innovation's coming from (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn Latin! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot to be said for learning a second language in order to understand your own language better, and to realize its deep structures and biases. In the evolution of English, much of the Germanic structure of Old English was eroded away, and the resulting language lost much of its surface logic.
My take is that English speakers benefit from learning a more obviously structured language, and that learning about the structure in itself helps with the programming mindset. To be an effective programmer, after all, you do not only need to be able to make the computer/compiler/interpreter understand you: your code must also be understood by those who integrate with it and maintain it. Thus, all communications skills also contribute to programming skills.
Therefore, my suggestion, only partially tongue-in-cheek, is to study Latin. While you won't find a lot of Romans to speak with nowadays, much less program with, and although other languages exist that also have a great deal of surface structure, the teaching of Latin has always been highly focused on grammar and structure, and a lot of excellent teaching resources exist in many languages.
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I learnt Latin at school. 20 years later I struggle to read even a basic inscription - outside the classroom if you have no use for it, the vocab disappears rapidly. So unless one plans to contribute Latin language articles to Vicipaedia, far better to pick a living romance language where you can practice by going on vacation.
Spanish is an obvious choice - according to wikipedia it has the 2nd most native speakers in the world, after Mandarin. The French love to travel, so you'll have plenty of opportunitie
Esperanto (Score:3)
Latin is dead, and too old -- odd word order, overly-complicated conjugations etc. I studied it at school for a couple of years.
A few schools in Britain have found that teaching Esperanto has many of the same benefits, but fewer problems. It's very regular, there are actual speakers of the language (mostly in Eastern Europe), and it has very few exceptions. It has some nice constructs not present in English, like a suffix for small or large. Children feel quite confident and successful with Esperanto, be
A matter of heart (Score:3)
At this point in your life, there is probably no hope you will gain a competent level in another language unless you are really motivated and that culture speaks to your heart. Only you can say what that language/culture might be.
The obvious answer (Score:5, Funny)
Other languages are pretty useless (for software) (Score:4, Interesting)
It's always great to learn a new (human) language. It will allow you to discover a new way of thinking, and let you see the world through a different point of view.
That said, let's be honest right away, if there is one part where it will bring you almost nothing, it's for software development. 99% of software communities online are discussed in English. 99.9% of software comments and software documentation is written in English. I happen to speak French, English, Dutch and Spanish (nothing special, I'm just European). I have been doing software development for more than 10 years and I cannot recall ever using any other language than English except when doing translation. The only advantage is that you'll be able to understand a bit better why translators are mad at you when you write bad printf()'s.
So go ahead, learn a new language, it's a great experience. I'd recommend one with a big amount of speakers like Spanish or Chinese (this one, I promise, will completely change your understanding of the concept of "language"). However, don't kid yourself, it's pointless with respect to software development :-)
French/Spanish / search for typical problems (Score:3)
French or Italian (Score:4, Informative)
German for several reasons (Score:4, Informative)
1. Once you start learning German (you get a fair bit of Swedish/Norwegian/Danish/Dutch/Afrikaans for free.) The same could be said for Latin, but it doesn't have any practical use.
2. Most of Eastern/Central Europe learned German. Outside of the major cities such as Budapest/Sofia/Bucharest/Lviv, I've found my broken German extremely useful. This is NOT a moot point as these countries are investing huge amounts in infrastructure.
3. Russian/Arabic would be extremely useful but much more difficult.
4. I wouldn't worry about Spanish. I had 7 years in public school (US Northeast) and I assume that you did as well. You'd pick it up pretty easily if you had to.
Sign Language (Score:3)
I wish i'd learned some form of sign language. Being able to hold a conversation without any noise at all (not even the clatter of a keyboard) would be awesome, as well as being able to communicate in a noisy environment.
It almost certainly wouldn't help you with software development though, unless your projects centered on software for the hearing impaired... and even that's probably a bit of a stretch if your are at the code writing end of your project and not dealing with the end users.
The other problem is that sign language isn't universal either - wikipedia says there are around 200 different languages so which one would you choose?
Russian and Chinese are stupid suggestions (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Chinese is the tones. Depending on your genetic material, as an adult you may find it very difficult to come to grips with them. Or it could be easy for you. But I can promise you that for every person for whom it is easy, there are tons of native English speakers who will never be able to deal with it successfully. The grammar in Chinese is pretty easy for the most part, which is good, but the tones are the killer. I am always amazed at how people suggest learning Mandarin or Cantonese without any regard to the difficulty that speakers of non-tonal languages will have. And you need to understand that as an adult unless you want to devote the next decades of your life to constant work at it, you will never learn Chinese characters. Yes, you could learn pinyin but that's not really all that practical honestly. So for all practical purposes you will be illiterate in Chinese, even if you learn to speak it well. Yes, you can use programs to translate your pinyin into the characters and vice-versa, but how practical is that on the streets of Beijing?
Yes, if you want to engage in questionable activities then Russian would be a good choice, but I can tell you that most native English speakers fail at their attempts to learn it. I'm one of the exceptions. Russian grammar is quite complex. It is an inflected language and that's the complexity. What this means to people not familiar with linguistic terms is that Russian nouns and adjectives change their spelling depending on how they are used in a sentence. Russian adjectives have up to 24 forms - 6 cases X 4 forms per case (singular masculine, singular feminine, singular neuter, plural). The good news is that some of the forms overlap so in reality there are usually "only" 19 or so forms to learn. Ha ha. Nouns have singular and plural forms to learn. Given how in the USA most English grammar instruction is over forever in public schools after 8th grade, you really have no idea how challenging it is for someone who doesn't even know what an indirect object is in English to try to understand something like the dative or genitive case. Without a proper understanding of the cases in Russian and memorization of the various forms of nouns and adjectives under them, you'll never make any progress at learning it. Outside of the ex-USSR it's generally pretty useless. I get some kicks out the "wow" factor of being able to impress people that I can speak it and I've done some traveling in the ex-USSR where I used it every day, but in the IT world it's been almost useless. Then again, I'm not a leet haxor. I can tell you that learning Cyrillic is very easy and that will absolutely not be the problem in learning Russian, but the grammar will separate the men from the boys. If you can believe this, from a grammatical standpoint most of the Slavic based languages are actually harder to learn than Russian, with Bulgarian/Macedonian being an exception.
English is really the most useful language to know. If I had to recommend another language, Spanish is generally the easiest one for English speakers to learn. Portuguese is not bad either. French would be next, followed by Italian and German and then pretty much everything else. The further English speakers get from Western Europe in the languages they want to learn, the more difficult it will be. I've found that the older you are, the harder you have to work at learning another language and most adults aren't willing to do the hard work necessary to succeed. Unless you are some language learning genius (unlikely), you will need to do about an hour a day, 5 days a week for about a year to achieve any kind of reasonable proficiency. And it's like climbing a hill. Once you get to the top, it's much easier to get down, but many give up on the way to the top because progress is so sl
Re: (Score:2)
Years of work? Oh, come now.
And what is your basis for claiming it won't help?
Mandarin Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mandarin Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
Communication is challenging because Chinese and English are completely different. Why do we expect him to do a better job learning Chinese than the Chinese developers did of learning English, even though they had a lot more incentive to do so? Maybe, occasionally, it might help him if he can clarify things in Chinese. But you have to weigh it against the risk that what he'll be misunderstood because his Chinese is too poor. When things go wrong, do you want him or the Chinese developers to be blamed? If he communicates something very clearly in English, they're at fault if they mess up. If he tries to speak Chinese, there's a good chance that he'll eventually get blamed.
In IT, there's little need for foreign-language skills, unless you happen to live in bilingual country (and even there, it's mostly used as a filter by HR departments). Everyone speaks English and there's a reason why he's a mid-career developer and never had to speak a foreign language.
That being said, learning another language can be a valuable experience. Just don't expect it to be useful on the job.
Re:Mandarin Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
It gives you a chance to re-iterate in the other person's language what you meant. Or you could just consider it useful for good will and generally smoothing your relationships. You can't go wrong improving your language skills.
Having lead off-shore Chinese developments teams since 2006, I wish I'd invested time in learning the language. The smattering of German I learnt at the Goethe Institut a few years ago really helps me with my German colleagues, even if it's an opportunity for them to laugh at me over a beer. It does give me a better sense of what is being discussed if they're talking to each other in German though.
Anyway, the story is about somebody in the US mid-West. That's a brutal time difference for working with Chinese colleagues. I did it for a number of years from Toronto (12-13 hours time difference). I'm much happier doing it from London now: I'd rather start work at 06:30 than have to come back to work at 21:30 after being out for dinner and not know when I'm going to escape so I can go to bed.
Re: (Score:3)
Communication is challenging because Chinese and English are completely different. Why do we expect him to do a better job learning Chinese than the Chinese developers did of learning English, even though they had a lot more incentive to do so?
The point you are missing, is the respect you get for respecting the other guys culture. Learning a language, especially one as far apart from English as Mandarin, is getting to know a foreign culture. Also you get to understand the structure of your own language much better.
A high percentage of americans, in my experience, suffer from a very narrow minded view on culture. Not from caracter or personality, but from lack of exposure.
So he should either go for
- Mandarin for demograhpic reasons. I am finding m
Re:Mandarin Chinese (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree with this at this point in time. First, Chinese is not a European language. A native speaker will require many years of study to achieve a level that will be even remotely useful in the workplace. I personally have spent about 6 years actively studying, more than 10 passively studying, and am just now at a level where I would feel comfortable functioning in a Chinese work environment. And I apologies for blowing my own horn, but people often tell me that my Chinese is the best of any westerner that they know. Guess what? I have yet to see any development jobs come my way because of it. There could always be a change in the future. That said, most of those types of jobs could just be given to a Chinese person with a high level of English. If you learn Chinese, do it because you are interested in learning Chinese because the ROI is pretty lousy. I suppose this could change in the future, but I kind of doubt it.
If anyone knows a job for someone with a CS/admin + Chinese background, feel free to message me.
Re: (Score:2)
This. It doesn't just apply to Chinese. The problem is people grossly underestimate the effort needed to learn a language. Even English - sure, it's valuable to be able to access the English part of the web, and lots of English books, documentation etc. But you have to compare it with what else 4 lessons per week for 10 years could earn you.
Re:Mandarin Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto for me in Japanese. English is incredibly important in the workplace, other languages are not particularly so. Even if you want to move to a country which speaks the language you are learning, it is just as easy to get a job in English it seems. At least in Japan, large developers are mainly working in English anyway and small developers are not interested in hiring foreign talent.
Having said that, it is fun reading both the English and Japanese Ruby mailing lists. I wouldn't learn Japanese just to do that, but it's a nice perk.
I think, though, that even though it hasn't benefited my career to this point, achieving adult level fluency in another language has been incredibly beneficial for me. No matter what language you pick, it's a massive task. It has changed the way I approach long term goals. Most people quit learning a language sometime after they learn how to ask directions to the toilet. Getting to the point where you are functional as an adult in society is at least an order of magnitude different scale. It changes your life.
My advice to the OP is to pick a language whose culture you are interested in. Don't worry about career.
A chance to get ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, maybe Chinese today and for the next couple of years.
But when labour costs start to rise in China where is the next place that the big multi-nationals will seek to keep their cost base as low as possible? If you can determine that and then learn the local language then you could reap big rewards when the off-shoring goes there.
Of course you can always just go for the long game. Eventually that low labour cost will be found in English speaking countries.
Re:A chance to get ahead (Score:4, Interesting)
But when labour costs start to rise in China where is the next place that the big multi-nationals will seek to keep their cost base as low as possible? If you can determine that and then learn the local language then you could reap big rewards when the off-shoring goes there.
This is an excellent point. The real money is in handover, and that's mostly done for all the established off-shoring locations. If you ready to do a handover in the next big location, you have a chance.
But you'll be hard pushed to assess that yourself, so it'll take a hell of a lot of reading and a hell of a lot of luck to achieve it.
The other option is to look at it not in terms of a single big outsourcing market, but to look for parallel outsourcing markets. At the moment there are two major outsourcing markets: English-speaking and Spanish-speaking. I think the next big opportunity is for those who are in a position to act as a "bridge" between the two operations when companies try to integrate them. Who's going to get India and the Philippines talking to Bolivia and Peru? Maybe it'll be you....
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who has learned Chinese as an adult, I would recommend against it unless you have the opportunity to do so without sacrificing considerable opportunity costs or have the luxury of not having to worry about opportunity costs. The learning process is considerably more time-consuming and challenging than a European language, and you cannot learn it to a functional level from taking classes. (There are many foreigners I've met in China who took four years of Chinese as an undergraduate and were astonished to discover when they set foot in the country that they were totally non-functional.) You have to actually live in a Chinese-speaking country, and it's very hard to get a decent job in China unless you're moved there by a multinational and retain your salary and benefits from the home country. Even then, if you're working a regular job, you simply won't have time to learn the language in a reaonable tme frame. I know plenty of expats in China who have been working here for 7-10 years and still can barely ask for directions in Chinese.
Finally, if you think you can simply show up in China and people will be beating down your door to give you a great job, think again. The idea that China is full of potential is a total myth for Westerners. There are almost no opportunities for Westerners outside of teaching English or other jobs unrelated to professional technical positions, and no Chinese-owned firm I've heard of has ever given a Westerner a management position with any authority. Whereas in the United States, being a non-U.S. citizen does not impose a glass ceiling, in China quite the opposite is true. You simply won't make money here unless you are working for a multinational and are moved here from your home country rather than someone who moves here and is then hired in-country, in which case your living here is taken as a clear signal you're willing to work for local wages.
In short, people who talk about Chinese as a way to open doors and create opportunities are simply out of touch with the realities on the ground in China.
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the Empire? India was part of the thuggish, cretan British Empire for around 200 or so years.
Hold on a minute, please don't assume that I'm a fan of my country's imperial past. I'm not.
It was Bharat for a bit longer than that (a few thousand at least). Hindustani is the official language of India as codified in the constitution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi-Urdu#Official_status). Hindustani is actually a mix of Hindi and Urdu. I suggest you read more before you comment on something you know shit about.
Well I'm guessing you're from the north, because there are plenty of speakers of Dravidian languages who would take issue with you. The official status, as explained in the article, is as the language of the federal government and half of India wants that to mean exactly what it says. Hindi is not "their" language and they're happier speaking English with other Indians as a neutral language. Here's an experiment for you: hop in an auto in Thiruvanathapuram and speak to the driver in Hindi. Then, at your destination, hop in another and speak to the driver in English. Tell me which works better for you.
And you're unlikely to find much discussion on the finer points of any programming language in any language other than English. That's just a retarded remark to begin with considering that English is the lingua franca of the planet.
Go back to school and learn something. Idiot.
Well considering that was part of my point, there's no need to insult me about it.
But the situation is different in India from other countries because English is so common. If you go into a book shop in most countries, you'll find a lot of programming books in the local language. The last time I visited Landmark in the Forum (Bangalore), I don't recall seeing any programming books in anything other than English. For that matter, I went to the spoken languages section too, and as far as I recall, the only books in Kannada were to learn Hindi or English, and the only books in Hindi taught English or Kannada....
Now why don't you go back to school and learn some manners!
Re:Chinese (Score:4, Funny)
1) Always be using continuous tense.
2) Be adding one generous sprinkling of archaic terms of endearment.
3) Do not be using definite or indefinite article, except where not belonging.
4) Move noddle left to right while speaking
Not being the crikey-moses rocket science, is it, old chap?
Re: (Score:3)
And you've proved yourself a small-minded racist bigot, by being well and truly wrong. The continuous tense thing is often charicatured, but very few charicatures get it right, coming out with ungrammatical[1] nonsense such as "I am thinking you are being right". There are certain verb classes that go into the continuous in certain grammatical situations, but not all. This is to do with which verbs classes have a non-continuous present meaning. Consider that having in phrases such as "I am having" in En
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually a fascinating dialect/language to study. I used to be able to speak it, but I can't any more.
I love the Indian English word "prepone" (to bring a meeting forward). Its such a logical opposite of postpone!
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I didn't know about the language thing. My main contact with people in India is call centres and the accents are so strong and hard to understand I just assumed it was the engish-is-a-second-language thing. It never occurred to me that it was most likely simply an accent. I guess I should get out more.
Could it be that they learn English with a more British influence? India has more British influence than most other Asian countries.
My mum is a teacher in an area with lots of south Asian ancestry children, and several of them have set up companies in India providing elocution lessons in English. The result is their accent is influenced by the British city my mum teaches in. I've twice had Indian call centre staff tell me I'm very easy to understand.
Re:Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
There's no such thing as (spoken) Chinese either.
China (if we were to anthropomorphize the country) might beg to differ. Although outsiders seem to want to call the official spoken language "mandarin" chinese to somehow distinguish it from other spoken dialects of hanzi/kanji script, the chinese just call it putunghua which roughly translates to the people's tongue or common spoken language. Of course putunghua is mostly just a codified Beijing dialect, but similarly, there's no such thing as (spoken) English either, except maybe if you count RP...
Of course there is no "Indian" language, though. The most common languages in India are English and "standard" Hindi. Of course Hindi has lots of dialects which are pretty much as unintelligible to standard Hindi speakers as some of the Chinese dialects are to the putunghua speaker.
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
Many language varieties in China would be seen by linguists as distinct. Compare putonghua or guangzhou hua with holooe. Whether you call these 'dialects' or 'languages' or fangyan depends on how you define the term 'language'.
While it is true that some spoken variants of English are quite difficult for other English speakers to understand (such as Black Country English, or the Glasgow Patter), there's not the linguistic range that you would find between the Chinese languages/dialects. Most English varieties are mutually intelligible, and differ primarily in pronunciation and a few words.
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)
A language is a dialect with an army and navy [wikipedia.org].
In Poland, some folks speak the Kashubian language which is less intelligible with Polish than for example Czech, yet during the soviet puppet regime people went to jail for daring to suggest it's anything more than some regional accent. The government said Polish is one language with no dialect continuum with the neighbours, and that regional dialects need to be eradicated.
So do the French with Breton, Occitan and others: they deny them the right to exist, fine companies who try to allow their employes to speak these languages at work, and do everything to eradicate them. For added hypoctisy, they demand that French should be preferred over English in parts of Canada.
Some countries want 1 country:1 language so much they artificially declare their languages as separate: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are identical baring a small number of words (below 1/100 the difference between British and American English), yet significant amount of taxpayer money goes into proving they have nothing in common with each other. It's so ridiculous that in the Wikipedia you have 7 (or more) copies of the identical language for purely political reasons.
I thus don't believe the language variety in China is going to survive long.
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I suspect language variety will survive. Franco's totalitarian regime tried for decades to eradicate the Catalan language (and Basque, and all the other languages in Spain except for Castillian Spanish). As soon as Franco carked it, Catalan suddenly reasserted itself to such a degree that it's almost as big (in the Iberian peninsula) as Portuguese, with millions of native speakers. Even the Basque language which is a weird non Indo-European language island with Ts and Xs where there ought not be Ts and Xs n
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Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, you fool.
He should learn proper English [which is most definitely not American].
It would be worse if, say, he was from a southeastern state...
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno. I prefer American spelling to British.
If you're arguing against the awful way the ignorant youngsters use language these days, remember that your grandparents thought exactly the same about you. And their grandparents about them...right back to old curmudgeons complaining about the grunts of their grandchildren 50,000 years ago.
People don't study their native tongues, they just copy people around them and make mistakes. Lingual evolution, it happens.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I don't know. Adding the "u" in "colour" makes me feel smarter.
It's sort of like when I was 10 and thought that if I could learn to speak Yiddish it would help me become a famous film director (I had an uncle who used to say the Jews run Hollywood, so I figured...).
Anyway, as an Italian kid growing up in Chicago's Little Italy, it must have been disconcerting for my parents when I'd come downstairs saying, "Oy gevalt, mammelah, this farkakte homework has me fertummelt!"
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll completely own this country in about another decade, if that long.
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He should learn proper English [which is most definitely not American].
Oh, you mean like calling a car's trunk a "boot", a scientist a "boffin", a phone a "mobe" or a cigarette a "fag"?
Mierde del toro. He should learn Spanish; most people in the Americas speak Spanish. It also comes in handy in California, Florida, Arizona, and Chicago.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably because Portuguese, whether from Brazil or Portugal, isn't Spanish.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Bollocks. In my role as an IETF working group chair, I work on a regular basis with geeks from India and China and Europe. All of them speak better english than my Chinese, or Hindi, or Turkic, or French, or Finnish, or Swedish. As a result of their imperfect english, they are able to do useful work, and engage constructively with other geeks, both native english speakers and not. The IETF has an RFC editor who fixes their english to be more canonical once the technical work is complete. Not speaking perfect Queen's English is not a handicap in this profession.
As an english-speaking geek, there is no real point in learning another language just for the purpose of improving your ability to do your work. Choose a foreign language you are attracted to speaking, regardless of whether it will be obviously useful. Maybe it'll be useful, maybe it won't. I would suggest French, German, Swedish, Dutch, or even Danish. If you want a hard language to learn, not an easy one, consider Chinese or Japanese. But plan to put a _lot_ of work into it—learning to read and write in Chinese or Japanese is _much_ harder than learning to read and write english, and involves a shit ton of memorization.
wiktionary.org has lists of the thousand most common words in quite a few languages. Memorize the list, and learn the meaning of the words, and then avail yourself of available online media. German and Danish TV are available online (e.g., tagesschau). French is harder, unfortunately. I haven't actively looked for Swedish or Dutch. There's a lot of Chinese TV available online as well, and of course if you decide on Japanese you can watch anime. :)
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Funny)
You need someone to deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. Someone with people skills; someone good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
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Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it; many native English speakers would benefit from learning how to speak and write English.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:5, Funny)
Your rite! Its for there own good!
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You didn't read the posting at all, only the title, didn't you?
That's okay, neither did the mods.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The best 2nd language for a programmer is naturally English. What your first language is depends on your nationality."
You are only half true:
The best 2nd language for a programmer is naturally English.
The first one should be C.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:5, Funny)
You're still thinking in Pascal. C should be 0th.
Pascal (Score:3)
In pascal, the first index of a characters in a string is index 1, but any other array starts with index 0 unless specified.
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In MS-Pascal version so-old-it-was-in-Roman you could define them to start from any index, so fuck off already.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Learning a second language fluently is DIFFICULT. If a language course salesmen tells you otherwise, he's lying.
On the other hand, attempting it will teach you some culture and improve your English skills a lot.
PS: If you think you even know your native language, you're delusional.
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It's not difficult, it's *very very* time consuming. Learning language (even as an adult) comes naturally to us. If it's difficult, you're doing it wrong. However, you'll never get away from the need to spend a great deal of time learning it. A 45-minute lesson a week and 45 minutes homework (like they think they can teach it in school) just won't work. I've been learning Spanish for four and a half years - for the last four and a half years, I've done at least some learning every single day without excepti
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Play the music while you sleep, play movies while you sleep. Your conscious mind doesn't have to be actively engaged for your brain to pick up on flow, patterns, rhythm, phonemes/morphemes etc... That's all low level reorganization.
If you have access to native speakers of the tongue then when on your own just practice connectors. Nouns are easy to learn from others.
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I've been learning Japanese for the past 7 years, three years in college courses (taught by native Japanese speakers) and the past couple of years on my own given the basics I got from the college courses. I've been to Japan three times now, and just got back from a month-long stay in Tokyo. I was able to make my way and hold some simple casual conversations with native speakers, but probably embarrassed myself a few times by still not getting the right word, or stopping to remember a word. I managed to
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There are some really exciting opportunities for growth on the African continent where French is used but not necessarily as an official language.
----
A close 2nd choice but more practical in your scenario.
Spanish - Spanish is rea
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Fluency is defined as being able to express yourself easily and articulately. A vocabulary of 1,000 words allows you to understand at least half of what's going on around you. Some studies go as high as 75-80%, such as this one [lingref.com] for Spanish (pg. 109), but I aimed low for my example. A vocabulary of about 10,000 words and a general understanding of how to assemble them into a sentence is enough to be considered fluent in almost any situation.
If you learn 30 words per day you would be able to express yourself at least half the time in a little over a month. You may lack grammatical skills but the idea would come across with some consistency. Continuing on that track, it would take just under a year to be able to express yourself with a high degree of fluency. Mind you, I am assuming you started focusing on grammar at some point during that year. For Spanish, I found it took about six weeks until my grammar limited me more than my vocabulary. I’m only a few months into learning but I can already communicate well with native speakers.
If you make flashcards using some kind of spaced repetition system like Anki or Mnemosyne it will automatically handle the review of words you’ve already learned so you just need to focus on daily study and let the program handle the rest. The greatest difficulties you’ll face during this process are making the flashcards, which is an important step in building recognition, and the odd word that simply will not stick.
When you’re not studying your flashcards you need to immerse yourself in the language. Listen to music you enjoy, try to watch shows that interest you and parrot everything you hear. In the beginning, the point of this exercise isn’t to understand anything but rather to recognize it. Eventually you’ll start to pick out words you’ve learned and infer the meaning of others based on context and the language starts to snowball in your head.
If learning a new language is not fun you’re doing it wrong. If learning a new language is difficult, you’re probably using Rosetta Stone. ;)
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You may lack grammatical skills but the idea would come across with some consistency.
Let's eat people! Let's eat, people!
Admittedly a smaller risk in a spoken language, but spoken proficiency alone doesn't cut it.
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Informative)
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The best 2nd language for a programmer is naturally English. What your first language is depends on your nationality.
As the old joke goes:
Q: What do you call a person who speaks 3 languages? A: Trilingual
Q: What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? A: Bilingual
Q: What do you call a person who only speaks 1 language? A: English
More seriously, though, unless you're interested in studying languages for the sake of it (nothing wrong with that) I don't see any point in learning a second language unless going to have an opportunity to use it for real - or you're never actually going to become fluent in it. The rea
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Q: What do you call a person who only speaks 1 language? A: American
FTFY.
If I could go back in time and choose again I think I'd go for Spanish, which I would actually have found useful from time to time.
I took two semesters of Spanish in college. And I live in central Texas, where there are TV stations in Spanish. I eventually realized that about the only good thing it could get me (aside from a low-paying service-sector job) was a few more news reports about NASA.
But it was great for teaching myself Japanese. They both have similar vowel sounds (but Japanese has stuff like hyo, ryo, etc. which most English speakers can't grok, even though they have similar sounds with other consonants), and both ha
Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see any point in learning a second language unless going to have an opportunity to use it for real - or you're never actually going to become fluent in it.
Indeed. Language is like every other thing you've learned -- use it or lose it. I was told by South American tourists when I worked for Disney World in the early '80s that I spoke Spanish very well; some thought I was a native speaker from a different country than them.
Today? If somebody dropped me in Acapulco I'd never be able to communicate with the natives.
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Re:Obvious answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sure it does. If your nationality is e.g. spanish, chances are rather high that your first language is spanish."
Or Catalan/Valencian, Galician, Basque, Aranese ....
What about Switzerland, Belgium or even Ethiopia, which has 84 languages and not an official one.
Also, depending on the state you're in (US) there are far more Spanish speakers than English ones.
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Thinking two more seconds about it, I'm afraid I have to correct myself. Try Brazilian Portuguese instead...because the women are really hot, and have a working and fulfilling sexual relationship will likely improve your work as a programmer.