this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025

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Falsehoods programmers believe about languages (www.lexiconista.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

67 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I can’t believe nobody has done this list yet. I mean, there is one about names, one about time and many others on other topics, but not one about languages yet (except one honorable mention that comes close). So, here’s my attempt to list all the misconceptions and prejudices I’ve come across in the course of my long and illustrious career in software localisation and language technology. Enjoy – and send me your own ones!

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (13 children)

Most of these just seem like basic educational issues except this one imo:

Every language has words for yes and no.

I want to see more than like 1 or 2 counterexamples. I'm pretty interested in linguistics on an amateur level. Don't believe I've heard of that one before now.

edit: in retrospect I do think I remember hearing this about Irish and Latin and some older languages. Interesting to know there are so many. I know the theory that language is related to thought patterns is semi-debunked, but I can't help but think that things like this indicate something about the cultures associated with a language.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

@TrickDacy @rimu but use them much more restrictively. As an example in Thai, "yes" is "chai", but is used only in a few situations, like if a question is ended with "chai mai" (yes followed by word forming polar question).

In interfaces you can't usually put this as yes/no buttons, but rather usually one is a verb like "khao" ("come/go in") and the other is the same word prefixed with mai ("not", different tone from the other "mai" i mentioned).

Chinese is similar but I don't know it as well.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Arabic doesn't have a word for "yes". I don't think most semitic languages do either [Classical Hebrew does not, but Modern Hebrew does, however, the word they use in modern Hebrew is the word for "Thusly", that is now a particle]. In fact you can see that proto-indo European didn't have a word for yes: Greek is ναι, but the romance languages are si (I am pretty sure French oui is actually derived from the same root as Spanish and Italian. Could be wrong) and if my memories is correct (and it may not be) classical Latin didn't have a word for yes. And the Germanic words yes/ja have a similar origin. I can't speak to the other IE languages unfortunately.

I know there are also language families that don't have a single word for no, but use a negation mood on the verb. I unfortunately can't give you an example of this. But it should be fun to look up!

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Falsehoods US programmers believe about languages

The US-centric, anglo-saxon centric worldview strikes again 😮‍💨 For those us that speak multiple languages, many of these are revelations...

Also, if they are, it's best to add examples, otherwise these are just random claims without any sources to back them up.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago

Ironically, many languages that violate these rules are spoken in the US natively. People in the US just like to forget that there are other natively spoken languages (spoken since before English was introduced to the continent even).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Another couple missing:

every language uses gendered nouns/verbs/adjectives/pronouns/etc
no language uses gendered nouns/verbs/adjectives/pronouns/etc
pronouns referring to people are always gendered
pronouns are always singular (1) or plural (2+)

A fun language to learn regarding these is Hawaiian, where the language uses a-class and o-class rather than masculine and feminine, and which you use is largely based on how much control you have over it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Segmenting a text into sentences is as easy as splitting on end-of-sentence punctuation.

Is there a language this actually isn't true for? It seems oddly specific like a lot of the others and I don't think I know of one that does this. Except maybe some wack ass conlangs of course.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

English. I can go to the store and buy a sandwich for $8.99 all in one sentence, but splitting it on periods gives you two sentences.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Oh of course, I didn't think about punctuation occurring in the middle of a sentence. Duh, thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

Now that's a pet peeve of mine, a bizarre belief surprisingly often held by people, who must be oblivious to the existence of tourism.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This. When I was in Mexico on my honeymoon, Google kept redirecting me to their .mx version of Google; despite my inability to read Spanish.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Every language has words for yes and no.

Assuming yes and no means true and false, c has numbers (1, 0) for yes and no and c++ can use those numbers for yes and no because it is a superset of c.

Technically, it's 0 and non-0 but I always use 1. They are integers rather than keywords.

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