On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 12:20 AM, Kevin Wright <[email protected]>wrote:
> Its a bit like knowing English. Sure, there are more logical > >> languages, even languages which allow you to express yourself in fewer >> words. But English is 'good enough' and in this case ubuqitous. >> > > Out of Hungarian, German, French and Greek, I've mostly found English to > be terser. Except for idioms/cliches of course :) > This is the best link I've found for some data on this http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2998/do-most-languages-need-more-space-than-english/3022#3022 I'd bet, Czech is terser than English, but who speaks it? ;) Even those logical languages have their quirks. > I don't know many languages, but I'd never call any of them logical. It's all crazy as hell. Though English seems to be the winner with things like "to table" meaning about the opposite in BE and AE and "to sanction" meaning both "to approve" and "to punish". > Just take German, we stopped saying "three and forthy" in English decades > ago; I also have it on good authority that any form of technical writing in > German is largely unreadable to a non-expert in the area, even native > speakers. > Though my German is way better than my English, I must agree. All German technical writings I've ever seen feel like automated translations via Gibberish from their Klingonic original, even when dealing with things I know fairly well. This might be partly explained by most experts probably preferring writing in English, but... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Java Posse" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
