Extinction Of Human Languages Affects Programming?

Tanmay Kudyadi writes "An article from NewScientist.com reports that half of all human languages will have disappeared by the end of the century, as smaller societies are assimilated into national and global cultures. This may be great news if one is looking at a common standard for communication, but it dosen't help those designing the next generation of programming languages. For example, there's an extremely strong link between Panini's Grammar and computer science (PDF link), and with every language lost, there is a possibility that we may have missed an opportunity at improving the underlying heuristics."

This ruins my day.

[grub]

Well.. that dashes all hope I had for finding a papyrus re-issue of "Babylonian C for Dummies". It's been out of print for millennia.

You're looking at it the wrong way

[American AC in Paris]

The way I see it, programming languages of the future aren't going to evolve from spoken language. Instead, the spoken languages of the future will evolve from programming languages.

In 200 years, There'll be 637 different words for "bug" in the our universal spoken language, ESPERA~1. To express confusion, a speaker will slap his hands over his face, stand stock still, shout "BLUE!", and wait for the other person to walk away.

Languages disappearing??

[bckrispi]

Hmm, that's doubleplus ungood...

Re:English is the world language (maybe)

[Nexus Seven]

You didn't happen to be visiting England did you?

Panini?

[John Girouard]

...strong link between Panini's Grammar and computer science

I knew sandwiches were related to programming!

Um shutup

[tomstdenis]

How exactly is C or Pascal based off a spoken language?

while (alive)

while (lust && !state(HUNGER)) {
seek_women(HIGH_PRIORITY);
if (found) {
sex_up(BYPAIRS)
sleep();
} else {
sex_up(MANUALLY);
watch(CARTOONS);
}
}

if (state(HUNGER))
{
seek_food();
if (found) {
chow_down_like_no_tommorow();
} else {
slaughter(NEIGHBOUR);
chow_down_like_is_tommorow();
}
}

}

Oh I get it ....

Well in NYC there is one language,,,,

[FerretFrottage]

sign language and I can guarantee that NY'ers will never part with it. Now of course programming with just the middle finger isn't as productive, but it works none the less ..|..

Re:You're looking at it the wrong way

[prockcore]

Instead, the spoken languages of the future will evolve from programming languages.

I->do(this, already);
I=ahead(the_curve);

New Languages

[knarfling]

On the plus side, there are new languages showing up all the time. Klingon, Vulcan, Romulan, Cardassian .... Imagine the programming possibilities!!!

Re:This ruins my day.

[CyberSp00k]

Babylonian C was a hardware language, silly. It was produced on clay tablets. No one is ever going to trust anything that matters to papyrus.

Re:This ruins my day.

[jasoncart]

Try archive.org or the Google cache.

Re:This ruins my day.

[dankney]

Have you checked eBay?

Re:You're looking at it the wrong way

[stefanlasiewski]

shout "BLUE!"

I think you mean scream BLUE, as in the "Blue scream of Death".

BAH!

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Computer science will never find the perfect language. It doesn't exist. Any time you try to render an idea in a language, any language, you have to simplify it.

We have known that language is an imperfect form of communication. The greeks knew it (hence the god Rumor.) The Taoists knew it. In 6000 yeras of recorded history we have not found a perfect language. If it doesn't work for huminty, why would computers be any different, where context is implied in almost every respect?

Some how...

[sofakingl]

I get the feeling that Klingon will end up being better preserved than at least half the languages that could potentially disappear.

Re:New Languages

[WinterSolstice]

The true warrior does not comment his code :)

-WS

I Don't Care

[rixstep]

As long as PASCAL, COBOL, and C++ are extinct too, I don't care.

Queens English

[Anonymous Coward]

i pr3dic7 7h@ in 4 100 j34rz 0r s0, 90 p3rc3n7 0f 7h3 w0r1d p0pu1@i0n wi11 5p34k 7h3 n0b13 4nd b34u7iphu1 14n9u493 of 1337 5p3ak

Re:Hard To Believe

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Last I checked, there are no verbs or nouns in C.

If you have a computer that can be programmed in English, please share. I can finally quit my day job and do something useful other than constantly have to translate between human thought and machine symbology.

Re:Evolution

[Frennzy]

with a one-bit bus (our mouth) that's going to be pretty slow.

I suppose we could add ten fingers, two eyes, and three toes to the mouth, and get a 16 bit bus, but that's going to be pretty hard to process. Not to mention it will be half duplex at best, since you'd need your eyes to see the other person communicating. Not to mention that a bit shift could very easily have you firmly planting your foot in your mouth.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week.

Re:Um shutup

[tomstdenis]

Deparate for what? I do real coding as well. It is people like the famous anonymous coward that really drain the usability of slashdot down. Keep it up though. You might say something funny eventually.

Tom

Obligatory Simpson's

[Frennzy]

Me extinct English? That's unpossible.

Re:This ruins my day.

[ackthpt]

Babylonian C was a hardware language, silly. It was produced on clay tablets

Cuneiform is awl write!

Who cares, C is all we needed!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

if C was good enough for Linus, is good enough for everything else!!

One Language to rule them all...

[Quixadhal]

It's called Assembly. Assembly is what lowly humans use because their meat-brains can't keep track of all those 0's an 1's.

Hey baby, wanna Kill All Humans?

Re:Hard To Believe

[ackthpt]

Fer ah=1 ta 5
ya'll gosub thingamajig(ah)
iffen error then goto goldangit
next ah

Re:English is the world language (maybe)

[Bendebecker]

Personally I am still expecting Latin to make a huge comeback...

I wish

[coldtone]

cobol would become extinct.

Re:Japanese

[bombadillo]

"Seriously, I'm teaching myself Japanese now, and you have no idea how frustrating it is to learn that one word can have MANY different meanings, all based on context, and there are no hard rules as to how its used"

That sounds pretty cool... Oh wait I don't want to confuse you with words that have different meanings based on context.

Re:Humbug

[JabberWokky]

Are you kidding? Not only is there poetry about COBOL [purdue.edu], but it's widely known that Shakespeare invented COBOL [leeds.ac.uk]:

"Let us ADD our INCOME to our CAPITAL, as the squirrel adds to its autumn horde. Aye, there's the SUM that makes a TOTAL WEALTH. 3000 DUCATS? Is this an EXPENDITURE I see before me? Marry 'tis best 'twere TAKEN AWAY, like as the magpie taketh away the jewel of great price. But hist! Here cometh the INTEREST, and 'tis of no mean interest, i' faith! I had lief ADD a percentage of this, than clasp my fair Rosalind's spleen."

In all reality, as many people have pointed out, there is a large chunk of poetry written in various programming languages, and the inverse is true as well; many human languages are used in forms that are human "programs". Instead of being stored on harddrives, they are published in cookbooks and engineering texts.

--
Evan

I'm going to cry now

[gsdean]

It's official. I feel like the biggest dork on this comment thread. I am a computer geek and i've taken Sanskrit and actually read Panini. Please guys, promise me we won't talk about women next!

Re:Um shutup

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I found a bug... Shouldn't it be:

while (lust && !state(HUNGER)) {
seek_women(HIGH_PRIORITY);
if (found) {
sex_up(BYPAIRS)
sleep();
} else {
watch(PR0N); // BUG FIX
sex_up(MANUALLY);
watch(CARTOONS);
}
}

Yet another argument for open source!

Ah, Tabarnak!

[dupper]

/Unfunny, obscure attempt at Canadian political humour

Re:You're looking at it the wrong way

[FleaPlus]

The way I see it, programming languages of the future aren't going to evolve from spoken language. Instead, the spoken languages of the future will evolve from programming languages.

Actually, a girl I occasionally swing dance with is doing a senior thesis for her English degree studying how the way people structure English language has changed since the advent of programming languages. Basically, she's looking at things like whether or not people have begun using things like conditional statements more often in English. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much she has so far -- she tends to change the topic whenever I bring it up.

D4 P41|\| !!!

[nounderscores]

Any questions? [megatokyo.com]

Syntax error

[melquiades]

Every time I try to comprehend the parent post, I get:

ungood is not an lvalue

Some people are just so hard to understand!

Re:Japanese

[owlstead]

edge, bridge, or chopsticks - you'd be in bizarre circumstances to not understand which one is being referred to

Watch out for that bridge!!!

What bridge?

AAAAAaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!

Don't Worry

[serutan]

It wouldn't have been any use because it wasn't Y0K compliant.

Re:English is the world language (maybe)

[b00fhead]

Too right mate! That's why us blokes still speak Strine. Crikey!

Re:English is the world language (maybe)

[unother]

If he was able to understand the English that was spoken, he was most likely in Scandinavia.

Re:This ruins my day.

[cstangle]

Clay tablets, by the way, were where the difference between a hacker and a cracker first arose. A hacker was a skillful carver of tablets, whereas a cracker was only able to do damage and destroy whatever he touched. :D

Re:Languages disappearing??

[TopShelf]

I'm sure others would think it very horrorshow, my good droog...

Re:Hard To Believe

[operagost]

Most people these days base their choice on the ancient Wiccan saying "An it harm none, do as ye will" (ie. it's OK if it doesn't hurt anyone).

In the time frame of the Wiccan religion, what's "ancient"? 1925?

Re:Hard To Believe

[E_elven]

Except for Perl, which is cuneiform for Gibberish.

Re:Hard To Believe

[Mad Marlin]

Last I checked, there are no verbs or nouns in C.

Operators function as verbs. Variables and constants function as nouns.

I won't be happy with any programming language until I can split an infinitive in it.

Re:Sanskrit was an artifical language itself

[watzinaneihm]

Atha sabdaanusaasanam.
which interprets and translates (by me):
atha sabda anu-sa-asanam
here-topic (is) sound detail-layout
I am not sure if you got that right... Asanam= Ass (also sit down etc.) . Also anu = near, companion etc.
So from the way you split the words up, I think it will be translated as "So is the sound from the Ass" or non-poetically- "Thus is the way of speaking from the Ass"
Now if it meant Atha Sabda Anusaasanam - It would probably mean "Thus is the teaching of sound" (Anusaasanam -Instruction)
Stupid Sanskrit- Way too complicated to be a living language, It better stayed dead (or Zombie as it is now).
Funniest thing is, German is almost like that. You can telescope 10-20 words into one and probably write a full paragraph in one word. Not to mention "the she carrot was by the male bee eaten" problem.

Algorithm

[Poligraf]

The word "algorithm" encripts the name of the first programmer - Al Gore ;-).

Re:Hard To Believe

[EvilTwinSkippy]

To boldly code what no man has coded before...