Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!samsung!uunet!mcsun!sunic!tut!tukki!sakkinen
From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Non-English speaking programming
Keywords: European, Asian programming languages
Message-ID: <2902@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 1 Feb 90 08:15:45 GMT
References: <4977@drutx.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative)
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 38

In article <4977@drutx.ATT.COM> mcp@drutx.ATT.COM (Mike Paugh) writes:
> ...
>The question: In non-English speaking countries is it necessary for
>programmers to learn English to write in languages such as Pascal, 
>COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.? Are there versions of these languages in 
>Spanish, French, German, Japanese...? If not, what are the favored
>languages in non-English speaking countries?

The number of fixed keywords in a programming language is usually
so small that it isn't much of an issue. Hardly any other language
than Cobol (as far as I know) tries to make its statement structure
similar to English. However, I have heard that the University of Oulu
built a version of Logo with Finnish keywords, for use in primary
and secondary schools.

There are even some advantages in that the keywords of a programming
language are not taken from a programmer's native language.
At least it means less restrictions in choosing meaningful identifiers.

In several languages, there are actually much more "keywords"
in various libraries more or less closely coupled to the language proper.
This holds especially for such object-oriented languages as Smalltalk-80
(TM), in which the boundary between the core language and the class
library is rather diffuse. It would be perhaps useful but surely
hard to realise, to make all this vocabulary multilingual.

There could be real benefits from having compiler error messages
and things like that available in several languages.
Unfortunately, such facilities are rare so far.
The Native Language System (?, the acronym is certainly NLS)
of the X/Open consortium is an effort in this direction.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland