Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ubc-cs!watmath!watcgl!kim From: kim@watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen) Newsgroups: can.general Subject: Re: French programming languages Message-ID: Date: 30 Aug 89 08:04:28 GMT References: <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <2587@gandalf.UUCP> <422@maytag.waterloo.edu> Sender: daemon@watcgl.waterloo.edu Distribution: can Organization: PAMI Group, U. of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 36 In-reply-to: giguere@aries5.uucp's message of 29 Aug 89 16:50:15 GMT In article <422@maytag.waterloo.edu> giguere@aries5.uucp (Eric Giguere) writes: In article <2587@gandalf.UUCP> edlee@gandalf.UUCP (Ed Lee) writes: > If you still >want some complaints, I do have one. Arret does > not exist if French. I'm ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sure it does. Look it up in any French-language dictionary. > told that France uses STOP for stop-signs so why is Quebec > different. I find that Quebec like to have their trivial > differences with .... everyone!! Oh, just because the French do it, the Quebecois must do it. That's silly. I don't think anyone here on the net claims that Canadian English == American English If the French choose to use STOP (a valid word... French and English steal a lot of words from each other) and the Quebecois ARRET, what's the problem? Vive la difference! The problem is that ARRET (while it is indeed a valid word) is a NOUN. In French (unlike English), one does not usually use a NOUN as a VERB (imperative form). STOP is indeed the imperative form of a verb (stopper), and so it makes sense to order someone to stop. The comparison with English (Canadian vs American) is flawed, since in English it is quite common for people to use nouns as verbs and vice versa. Also, there is no definitive standard for English, while there is one for the French language. -- T. Kim Nguyen kim@watsup.waterloo.{edu|cdn} kim@watsup.uwaterloo.ca {uunet|utzoo|utai|decvax}watmath!watsup!kim Systems Design Engineering -- University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada