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Ask Slashdot: 2nd Spoken/Written Language For Software Developer?
ichimunki writes "I am a mid-career software developer. I am from the Midwestern U.S. and my native language is English. I've studied a few languages over the years, both human and computer. Lately I've begun to wonder what is the best second (human) language for someone in this field to have. Or is there even any practical value in working to become fluent in a non-English language? I am not planning to travel or move/work abroad. But if I knew a second language, would I be able to participate in a larger programming community worldwide? Would I be able to work with those folks in some useful capacity? Perhaps building products for foreign markets?"
I would say Russian. It's my 3rd language (English being my second), and it has helped me a lot when searching for some specific info on the net. There is a wealth of information on programming to be found; especially if you are interested in security. This might be less relevant for you if you are looking for information that might be considered 'shady' (e.g. jailbreaking phones, breaking certain security features), but I've found it very helpful.
About all I'd say is: Pick a language mostly-unrelated to your own. Bonus points if you expect to have coworkers who speak it natively.
I see a comment saying it won't help you to learn a second language. I am unpersuaded. I generally find that anything I do which makes me more flexible makes me a better programmer. Being able to think in another language can be really useful for shaking up some of your presuppositions and assumptions. On the other hand, so can a philosophy degree.
I learned Chinese well enough to dream in it, and then mostly forgot it over the next decade or two. I still have an easier time understanding Chinese coworkers, because their English is often idiomatic for Chinese. But mostly... I am a more flexible person. I have concepts that there's a word for in Chinese and no word for in English. I learned to handle different ways of thinking about grammar. Overall, a good experience, and not one I regret. It's not as though it's a huge time sink; I'd guess I've spent more time playing video games in any given two-year period than I spent learning Chinese.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
No, please... Don't do that unless you're also culturally involved in your target market and actually understand the countries you write software for. Look at the whole "locales" mess. It works fine, if you have a single region with a single language, beyond that, it becomes very fishy... and $DIETY help you if you actually want an English system with date and time set to your geographical location. Language and regional settings should be entirely independent, but they aren't. On Linux, I found a workaround by just generating my own locales, but still.
I have worked on many multilingual projects, and I assure you: localization is not mere translation and translation is not merely swapping out strings with language. I would say, I can help on projects that to language for a sizeable part of Europe, but I am not good enough to include Asian languages, the Cyrillic typeset or even plain Greek.
While it's very interesting... I just wanted to warn you: you don't just walk into Localization.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
French is the language of love!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Thats right most have C as there first language
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I agree with you on Chinese. Sooner or later you will work on some project where most of the developers are in China. Communication is the most challenging part of such a project. If you know the language you are definitely in a better position to get higher salary or some team leader position.
The kind of questions that people end up asking seem to scream of "I'm so unsure about myself and what I want and I need somebody to tell me what to do". I just don't get it. These questions asked on Slashdot depress me.
Obviously, if you can and want to, do learn a language. And learn the one that makes the most sense wherever you go and whatever you do. Why are you asking others to tell you what to do?
You didn't read the posting at all, only the title, didn't you?
I'd say that for a software developer specifically there isn't a particular second language that would be useful, as the lingua franca in the software development world is already English. Even in non-English speaking countries it is common to write code and documentation in English, converse in English, etc.
So if you want to expand your potential I'd say choose a second language that's generally useful. If you want to limit it to your own geographic area I'd say Spanish. If you want the largest possible expansion of your potential market I'd say Mandarin Chinese.
Chinese or indian are the obvious answers, but they may be a bit too much.
I would go with German, because it is a fairly large language area (90 million + speakers) most of which belong to technologically advanced nations. As an alternative consider a latin language, such as Spanish.
You're American - you're going to need Spanish to sound like a local soon -
how else are you going to know what the guys and gals at the local store are saying behind your back.
but seriously - Chinese , Japanese , Korean , Finnish , German are all good starters
who where what when now?
If I lived in the US I'd learn Spanish as a second language. It ought to be compulsory for all American school children. It's the second most spoken language in the U.S. It's the language of the majority of the Americas from Mexico down. And trends I don't see changing significantly seem to indicate it will only have a stronger presence in the U.S. over time. So that's what I'd focus on first, regardless of vocation.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Let's face it; many native English speakers would benefit from learning how to speak and write English.
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Coming from someone who has English as third language, I'd say you're fine without, since all documentation is available in English and most discussion is going on in English. I have actually never used my first or second language for participating in software community discussion. OTOH, these are minor languages with 6-10 million speakers worldwide, all of which learn English in school anyway.
However, among the worlds greater languages, there are certainly a lot of people who can't communicate well in English and there is a lot of discussion in these languages. So I would say, pick one major language that could be useful in all walks of life. Or just pick any language that you are interested in. However, for the sole purpose of participating in the programming community, I don't think time invested will pay off.
There are two crucial reasons for learning a language: necessity and personal motivation. If it isn't necessary for you, you'll have to go with motivation. So, pick a language that you want to learn, because you want to learn it.
Lemon curry???
Well, maybe Chinese today and for the next couple of years.
But when labour costs start to rise in China where is the next place that the big multi-nationals will seek to keep their cost base as low as possible? If you can determine that and then learn the local language then you could reap big rewards when the off-shoring goes there.
Of course you can always just go for the long game. Eventually that low labour cost will be found in English speaking countries.
I'd say Russian, Japanese, or German; those three countries seem to have a pretty big focus on technology.
There is a lot to be said for learning a second language in order to understand your own language better, and to realize its deep structures and biases. In the evolution of English, much of the Germanic structure of Old English was eroded away, and the resulting language lost much of its surface logic.
My take is that English speakers benefit from learning a more obviously structured language, and that learning about the structure in itself helps with the programming mindset. To be an effective programmer, after all, you do not only need to be able to make the computer/compiler/interpreter understand you: your code must also be understood by those who integrate with it and maintain it. Thus, all communications skills also contribute to programming skills.
Therefore, my suggestion, only partially tongue-in-cheek, is to study Latin. While you won't find a lot of Romans to speak with nowadays, much less program with, and although other languages exist that also have a great deal of surface structure, the teaching of Latin has always been highly focused on grammar and structure, and a lot of excellent teaching resources exist in many languages.
The major language in India is English (it was a part of the Empire for a very long time). While many try to push Hindi, it is not truly "national", so English is the standard in business and technology. You're unlikely to find much discussion of the finer points of Python list comprehensions in Hindi....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
There's no such thing as (spoken) Chinese either.
China (if we were to anthropomorphize the country) might beg to differ. Although outsiders seem to want to call the official spoken language "mandarin" chinese to somehow distinguish it from other spoken dialects of hanzi/kanji script, the chinese just call it putunghua which roughly translates to the people's tongue or common spoken language. Of course putunghua is mostly just a codified Beijing dialect, but similarly, there's no such thing as (spoken) English either, except maybe if you count RP...
Of course there is no "Indian" language, though. The most common languages in India are English and "standard" Hindi. Of course Hindi has lots of dialects which are pretty much as unintelligible to standard Hindi speakers as some of the Chinese dialects are to the putunghua speaker.
The obvious answer is Klingon.
It's always great to learn a new (human) language. It will allow you to discover a new way of thinking, and let you see the world through a different point of view.
That said, let's be honest right away, if there is one part where it will bring you almost nothing, it's for software development. 99% of software communities online are discussed in English. 99.9% of software comments and software documentation is written in English. I happen to speak French, English, Dutch and Spanish (nothing special, I'm just European). I have been doing software development for more than 10 years and I cannot recall ever using any other language than English except when doing translation. The only advantage is that you'll be able to understand a bit better why translators are mad at you when you write bad printf()'s.
So go ahead, learn a new language, it's a great experience. I'd recommend one with a big amount of speakers like Spanish or Chinese (this one, I promise, will completely change your understanding of the concept of "language"). However, don't kid yourself, it's pointless with respect to software development :-)
"The best 2nd language for a programmer is naturally English. What your first language is depends on your nationality."
You are only half true:
The best 2nd language for a programmer is naturally English.
The first one should be C.
Your rite! Its for there own good!
As someone who has learned Chinese as an adult, I would recommend against it unless you have the opportunity to do so without sacrificing considerable opportunity costs or have the luxury of not having to worry about opportunity costs. The learning process is considerably more time-consuming and challenging than a European language, and you cannot learn it to a functional level from taking classes. (There are many foreigners I've met in China who took four years of Chinese as an undergraduate and were astonished to discover when they set foot in the country that they were totally non-functional.) You have to actually live in a Chinese-speaking country, and it's very hard to get a decent job in China unless you're moved there by a multinational and retain your salary and benefits from the home country. Even then, if you're working a regular job, you simply won't have time to learn the language in a reaonable tme frame. I know plenty of expats in China who have been working here for 7-10 years and still can barely ask for directions in Chinese.
Finally, if you think you can simply show up in China and people will be beating down your door to give you a great job, think again. The idea that China is full of potential is a total myth for Westerners. There are almost no opportunities for Westerners outside of teaching English or other jobs unrelated to professional technical positions, and no Chinese-owned firm I've heard of has ever given a Westerner a management position with any authority. Whereas in the United States, being a non-U.S. citizen does not impose a glass ceiling, in China quite the opposite is true. You simply won't make money here unless you are working for a multinational and are moved here from your home country rather than someone who moves here and is then hired in-country, in which case your living here is taken as a clear signal you're willing to work for local wages.
In short, people who talk about Chinese as a way to open doors and create opportunities are simply out of touch with the realities on the ground in China.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
I dunno. I prefer American spelling to British.
If you're arguing against the awful way the ignorant youngsters use language these days, remember that your grandparents thought exactly the same about you. And their grandparents about them...right back to old curmudgeons complaining about the grunts of their grandchildren 50,000 years ago.
People don't study their native tongues, they just copy people around them and make mistakes. Lingual evolution, it happens.
No sig today...
Many language varieties in China would be seen by linguists as distinct. Compare putonghua or guangzhou hua with holooe. Whether you call these 'dialects' or 'languages' or fangyan depends on how you define the term 'language'.
While it is true that some spoken variants of English are quite difficult for other English speakers to understand (such as Black Country English, or the Glasgow Patter), there's not the linguistic range that you would find between the Chinese languages/dialects. Most English varieties are mutually intelligible, and differ primarily in pronunciation and a few words.
If you're interested in programming neural networks then a lot of extra resources and communities are available in French and to a lesser degree Italian. In Italian there are also publications and websites that deal with AL and AI (artificial life and artificial intelligence). I discovered them when I was looking at stupidology, that's the study of why intelligent people do stupid things that average people don't. The field has since been subsumed and renamed by psychology which is doing its best to bury it quietly. For general programming neither French nor Italian is any particular use, they're only useful for neural networks, AL and AI as far as I'm aware.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Learning a second language fluently is DIFFICULT. If a language course salesmen tells you otherwise, he's lying.
On the other hand, attempting it will teach you some culture and improve your English skills a lot.
PS: If you think you even know your native language, you're delusional.
No sig today...
You're still thinking in Pascal. C should be 0th.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Assuming you already speak English, it really depends where you live. I live in Canada and speaking French is a big asset. In the US Spanish or French would probably be good. A lot depends on the industry you program for as well.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
1. Once you start learning German (you get a fair bit of Swedish/Norwegian/Danish/Dutch/Afrikaans for free.) The same could be said for Latin, but it doesn't have any practical use.
2. Most of Eastern/Central Europe learned German. Outside of the major cities such as Budapest/Sofia/Bucharest/Lviv, I've found my broken German extremely useful. This is NOT a moot point as these countries are investing huge amounts in infrastructure.
3. Russian/Arabic would be extremely useful but much more difficult.
4. I wouldn't worry about Spanish. I had 7 years in public school (US Northeast) and I assume that you did as well. You'd pick it up pretty easily if you had to.
Part of the Empire? India was part of the thuggish, cretan British Empire for around 200 or so years.
Hold on a minute, please don't assume that I'm a fan of my country's imperial past. I'm not.
It was Bharat for a bit longer than that (a few thousand at least). Hindustani is the official language of India as codified in the constitution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi-Urdu#Official_status). Hindustani is actually a mix of Hindi and Urdu. I suggest you read more before you comment on something you know shit about.
Well I'm guessing you're from the north, because there are plenty of speakers of Dravidian languages who would take issue with you. The official status, as explained in the article, is as the language of the federal government and half of India wants that to mean exactly what it says. Hindi is not "their" language and they're happier speaking English with other Indians as a neutral language. Here's an experiment for you: hop in an auto in Thiruvanathapuram and speak to the driver in Hindi. Then, at your destination, hop in another and speak to the driver in English. Tell me which works better for you.
And you're unlikely to find much discussion on the finer points of any programming language in any language other than English. That's just a retarded remark to begin with considering that English is the lingua franca of the planet.
Go back to school and learn something. Idiot.
Well considering that was part of my point, there's no need to insult me about it.
But the situation is different in India from other countries because English is so common. If you go into a book shop in most countries, you'll find a lot of programming books in the local language. The last time I visited Landmark in the Forum (Bangalore), I don't recall seeing any programming books in anything other than English. For that matter, I went to the spoken languages section too, and as far as I recall, the only books in Kannada were to learn Hindi or English, and the only books in Hindi taught English or Kannada....
Now why don't you go back to school and learn some manners!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
In Poland, some folks speak the Kashubian language which is less intelligible with Polish than for example Czech, yet during the soviet puppet regime people went to jail for daring to suggest it's anything more than some regional accent. The government said Polish is one language with no dialect continuum with the neighbours, and that regional dialects need to be eradicated.
So do the French with Breton, Occitan and others: they deny them the right to exist, fine companies who try to allow their employes to speak these languages at work, and do everything to eradicate them. For added hypoctisy, they demand that French should be preferred over English in parts of Canada.
Some countries want 1 country:1 language so much they artificially declare their languages as separate: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are identical baring a small number of words (below 1/100 the difference between British and American English), yet significant amount of taxpayer money goes into proving they have nothing in common with each other. It's so ridiculous that in the Wikipedia you have 7 (or more) copies of the identical language for purely political reasons.
I thus don't believe the language variety in China is going to survive long.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You didn't read the posting at all, only the title, didn't you?
That's okay, neither did the mods.
"Sure it does. If your nationality is e.g. spanish, chances are rather high that your first language is spanish."
Or Catalan/Valencian, Galician, Basque, Aranese ....
What about Switzerland, Belgium or even Ethiopia, which has 84 languages and not an official one.
Also, depending on the state you're in (US) there are far more Spanish speakers than English ones.
1) Always be using continuous tense.
2) Be adding one generous sprinkling of archaic terms of endearment.
3) Do not be using definite or indefinite article, except where not belonging.
4) Move noddle left to right while speaking
Not being the crikey-moses rocket science, is it, old chap?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's actually a fascinating dialect/language to study. I used to be able to speak it, but I can't any more.
I love the Indian English word "prepone" (to bring a meeting forward). Its such a logical opposite of postpone!
I have studied other languages. I've got a talent for it. I'm just going to be honest with you, which is better than some of unrealistic answers you've been given so far.
The problem with Chinese is the tones. Depending on your genetic material, as an adult you may find it very difficult to come to grips with them. Or it could be easy for you. But I can promise you that for every person for whom it is easy, there are tons of native English speakers who will never be able to deal with it successfully. The grammar in Chinese is pretty easy for the most part, which is good, but the tones are the killer. I am always amazed at how people suggest learning Mandarin or Cantonese without any regard to the difficulty that speakers of non-tonal languages will have. And you need to understand that as an adult unless you want to devote the next decades of your life to constant work at it, you will never learn Chinese characters. Yes, you could learn pinyin but that's not really all that practical honestly. So for all practical purposes you will be illiterate in Chinese, even if you learn to speak it well. Yes, you can use programs to translate your pinyin into the characters and vice-versa, but how practical is that on the streets of Beijing?
Yes, if you want to engage in questionable activities then Russian would be a good choice, but I can tell you that most native English speakers fail at their attempts to learn it. I'm one of the exceptions. Russian grammar is quite complex. It is an inflected language and that's the complexity. What this means to people not familiar with linguistic terms is that Russian nouns and adjectives change their spelling depending on how they are used in a sentence. Russian adjectives have up to 24 forms - 6 cases X 4 forms per case (singular masculine, singular feminine, singular neuter, plural). The good news is that some of the forms overlap so in reality there are usually "only" 19 or so forms to learn. Ha ha. Nouns have singular and plural forms to learn. Given how in the USA most English grammar instruction is over forever in public schools after 8th grade, you really have no idea how challenging it is for someone who doesn't even know what an indirect object is in English to try to understand something like the dative or genitive case. Without a proper understanding of the cases in Russian and memorization of the various forms of nouns and adjectives under them, you'll never make any progress at learning it. Outside of the ex-USSR it's generally pretty useless. I get some kicks out the "wow" factor of being able to impress people that I can speak it and I've done some traveling in the ex-USSR where I used it every day, but in the IT world it's been almost useless. Then again, I'm not a leet haxor. I can tell you that learning Cyrillic is very easy and that will absolutely not be the problem in learning Russian, but the grammar will separate the men from the boys. If you can believe this, from a grammatical standpoint most of the Slavic based languages are actually harder to learn than Russian, with Bulgarian/Macedonian being an exception.
English is really the most useful language to know. If I had to recommend another language, Spanish is generally the easiest one for English speakers to learn. Portuguese is not bad either. French would be next, followed by Italian and German and then pretty much everything else. The further English speakers get from Western Europe in the languages they want to learn, the more difficult it will be. I've found that the older you are, the harder you have to work at learning another language and most adults aren't willing to do the hard work necessary to succeed. Unless you are some language learning genius (unlikely), you will need to do about an hour a day, 5 days a week for about a year to achieve any kind of reasonable proficiency. And it's like climbing a hill. Once you get to the top, it's much easier to get down, but many give up on the way to the top because progress is so sl
You need someone to deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. Someone with people skills; someone good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Oh, I don't know. Adding the "u" in "colour" makes me feel smarter.
It's sort of like when I was 10 and thought that if I could learn to speak Yiddish it would help me become a famous film director (I had an uncle who used to say the Jews run Hollywood, so I figured...).
Anyway, as an Italian kid growing up in Chicago's Little Italy, it must have been disconcerting for my parents when I'd come downstairs saying, "Oy gevalt, mammelah, this farkakte homework has me fertummelt!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Fluency is defined as being able to express yourself easily and articulately. A vocabulary of 1,000 words allows you to understand at least half of what's going on around you. Some studies go as high as 75-80%, such as this one for Spanish (pg. 109), but I aimed low for my example. A vocabulary of about 10,000 words and a general understanding of how to assemble them into a sentence is enough to be considered fluent in almost any situation.
If you learn 30 words per day you would be able to express yourself at least half the time in a little over a month. You may lack grammatical skills but the idea would come across with some consistency. Continuing on that track, it would take just under a year to be able to express yourself with a high degree of fluency. Mind you, I am assuming you started focusing on grammar at some point during that year. For Spanish, I found it took about six weeks until my grammar limited me more than my vocabulary. I’m only a few months into learning but I can already communicate well with native speakers.
If you make flashcards using some kind of spaced repetition system like Anki or Mnemosyne it will automatically handle the review of words you’ve already learned so you just need to focus on daily study and let the program handle the rest. The greatest difficulties you’ll face during this process are making the flashcards, which is an important step in building recognition, and the odd word that simply will not stick.
When you’re not studying your flashcards you need to immerse yourself in the language. Listen to music you enjoy, try to watch shows that interest you and parrot everything you hear. In the beginning, the point of this exercise isn’t to understand anything but rather to recognize it. Eventually you’ll start to pick out words you’ve learned and infer the meaning of others based on context and the language starts to snowball in your head.
If learning a new language is not fun you’re doing it wrong. If learning a new language is difficult, you’re probably using Rosetta Stone. ;)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Q: What do you call a person who only speaks 1 language? A: American
FTFY.
If I could go back in time and choose again I think I'd go for Spanish, which I would actually have found useful from time to time.
I took two semesters of Spanish in college. And I live in central Texas, where there are TV stations in Spanish. I eventually realized that about the only good thing it could get me (aside from a low-paying service-sector job) was a few more news reports about NASA.
But it was great for teaching myself Japanese. They both have similar vowel sounds (but Japanese has stuff like hyo, ryo, etc. which most English speakers can't grok, even though they have similar sounds with other consonants), and both have heavily-conjugated verbs. In fact, it overlaid what little Spanish I learned such that I want to use Spanish words with Japanese grammar.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Bollocks. In my role as an IETF working group chair, I work on a regular basis with geeks from India and China and Europe. All of them speak better english than my Chinese, or Hindi, or Turkic, or French, or Finnish, or Swedish. As a result of their imperfect english, they are able to do useful work, and engage constructively with other geeks, both native english speakers and not. The IETF has an RFC editor who fixes their english to be more canonical once the technical work is complete. Not speaking perfect Queen's English is not a handicap in this profession.
As an english-speaking geek, there is no real point in learning another language just for the purpose of improving your ability to do your work. Choose a foreign language you are attracted to speaking, regardless of whether it will be obviously useful. Maybe it'll be useful, maybe it won't. I would suggest French, German, Swedish, Dutch, or even Danish. If you want a hard language to learn, not an easy one, consider Chinese or Japanese. But plan to put a _lot_ of work into it—learning to read and write in Chinese or Japanese is _much_ harder than learning to read and write english, and involves a shit ton of memorization.
wiktionary.org has lists of the thousand most common words in quite a few languages. Memorize the list, and learn the meaning of the words, and then avail yourself of available online media. German and Danish TV are available online (e.g., tagesschau). French is harder, unfortunately. I haven't actively looked for Swedish or Dutch. There's a lot of Chinese TV available online as well, and of course if you decide on Japanese you can watch anime. :)
Play the music while you sleep, play movies while you sleep. Your conscious mind doesn't have to be actively engaged for your brain to pick up on flow, patterns, rhythm, phonemes/morphemes etc... That's all low level reorganization.
If you have access to native speakers of the tongue then when on your own just practice connectors. Nouns are easy to learn from others.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I don't see any point in learning a second language unless going to have an opportunity to use it for real - or you're never actually going to become fluent in it.
Indeed. Language is like every other thing you've learned -- use it or lose it. I was told by South American tourists when I worked for Disney World in the early '80s that I spoke Spanish very well; some thought I was a native speaker from a different country than them.
Today? If somebody dropped me in Acapulco I'd never be able to communicate with the natives.
Free Martian Whores!
They'll completely own this country in about another decade, if that long.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That's probably because Portuguese, whether from Brazil or Portugal, isn't Spanish.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."