[MUD-Dev] Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtualsocietes

[Michael Chui]

--- David Kennerly <kennerly at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> Michael Chui wrote:

>> Now, there's another idea floating around. Chris Crawford, in his
>> essay History of Thinking 4, predicts that /programming
>> languages/ will be the next universal language. That the only
>> thing missing is an alphabet.

> Even if you could speak perfect C++ who would care to parse it?

> Programming languages themselves are built on very specific
> semantics and cultural constructs.  They are languages, but their
> native speakers are artificial, by definition.  It is with ardor
> that humans learn to read and type it at a snail's pace; whereas,
> even an ancient desktop can fluently discourse a thousand times
> faster.  But they're just different.  How do you say, in any
> programming language, "I love you"?

This was a prediction, and clearly, there's probably no real path to
it right now. I've been thinking, lately, about how language would
be like if it had been developed via pattern recognition rather than
sequential thinking. I hypothesized that the result would have been
ideas communicated, perhaps, by picture, with details added by
detailing this visual image.

Perhaps, in time, a programming language will arise of this shape? I
don't know. And I'm not at the stage where this is anything of an
issue for me, so it's not as if I'm spending my off-hours pondering
this matter of great import.

>> Global unity is a nice ideal.

> It is?  Why would the world want to become that boring?  Separate
> languages are founded on separate cultures that have separate
> ideologies.  The only times history has known unity (now is
> definitely on the upside of that curve) it has been called an
> empire, and in empires the emperor's language spread.

Said it's a nice ideal, not that it's any aspiration I'd look to.
This is a tangent from the purpose of the mailing list, though, so I
won't get into it, though I'd welcome a foray into philosophy with
you.

--- "Shu-yu Guo (Laptop)" <shu at rufuran.org> wrote:

> Just by speaking English wouldn't create too much of a unison...

Language is a strong point of identity. Most people identify with
their native tongue most strongly, and if not that, then the language
they use most often. Uniting the world underneath a common language
would certainly facilitate global unity, but, of course, there are
plenty of other things to be worked out.
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