PDA

View Full Version : Non-English Languages



WILL
25-05-2006, 01:35 AM
Hey guys, I'm currious about something. Since PGD is an international site and we get members and visitors from around the world, there has to be a lot more people that speak another language than those that can just speak English.

So what are your OTHER languages?

(If I missed a major one, let me know! ;))

czar
25-05-2006, 01:52 AM
Alphabetical and ability to choose more than one language would have been good ;)

WILL
25-05-2006, 02:13 AM
:lol: Well I can't do anything about the second one, but yeah I think getting them other than randomly scouring around a map of the world would have something to do with the first. ;)

Oh and just to save those of you who want to count them.. it's 61 languages. ;)

cairnswm
25-05-2006, 06:54 AM
I voted based on my home Language rather than my primary Language (Voting English would have been boring :) )

WILL
25-05-2006, 07:32 AM
It's actually kinda funny. I was thinking of both you and TheLion when I added that one. :)

You guys are both our South African connection. ;)

Nitrogen
25-05-2006, 11:08 AM
Hey what about me!? ;)

hehe, though I can speak Afrikaans, I'm brought up english!

dmantione
25-05-2006, 11:49 AM
A lot of people learn programming before their English skills are good enough to participate in international forums like this one. At least it was true for me. The success of a programming language also depends on multi-lingual literature. Languages like C++, Java and PHP are very accessible because book stores are full with books to learn those languages. English books often simply don't make it into the book stores.

Pascal did had good very literature available in the Turbo Pascal days. A Delphi book is not that hard to find nowadays, but the situation has worsened a lot.

We could compensate by making our web sites available in more languages, but this is of course a lot of work.

WILL
25-05-2006, 01:15 PM
Nitrogen: Hmm. yeah I guess you , McCLaw and a few others are way down in South Africa too huh? Very cool. ;) When looking up all these languages I realised how diverse your country is compaired to most of the other countries in Africa, me being one who doesn't know too much about the continent of Africa it's self.

dmantione: Yeah I guess it does kinda suck sometimes how a non-English speaking person who wants to program and get into something like Pascal or a specific too, yet can't read or speak the language very much. Vice versa the other way around. Well there was a book idea running around the forums, perhaps one of the main features of this book could be that it is also offered in multiple languages.

jdarling
25-05-2006, 01:31 PM
Maybe you should set it up as check boxes and ask what languages we can read and write :). My primary language is english (since I changed career paths), but I can speak, read, and write a few others well enough to carry on some form of conversation :)

Ingemar
25-05-2006, 06:43 PM
I am the first swede! :D Does that mean that I'm the last surviving Pascal game programmer in Sweden? :?

dmantione
25-05-2006, 07:17 PM
FPC developer Olle Raab is Swedish. :wink:

Ingemar
25-05-2006, 07:22 PM
FPC developer Olle Raab is Swedish. :wink:
I know, I have met him. :)

Robert Kosek
25-05-2006, 07:30 PM
English is my primary and Pascal is my secondary. Anything else I can't say more then a few words in. :P

jdarling
25-05-2006, 08:28 PM
From the cuff w/o an IDE:

unit Developer;

interface

type
TDeveloper = class
private
FPrimaryLanguage : String;
FSecondaryLanguages : TStringList;
procedure SetSecondaryLanguages(const Value:TStrings);
function GetSecondaryLanguages : TStrings;
public
constructor Create;
destructor Destroy; override;
published
property PrimaryLanguage : String read FPrimaryLanguage write FPrimaryLanguage;
property SecondaryLanguages : TStrings read GetSecondaryLanguages write SetSecondaryLanguages;
end;

implementation

constructor TDeveloper.Create;
begin
FSecondaryLanguages := TStringList.Create;
end;

destructor TDeveloper.Destroy;
begin
FSecondaryLanguages.Free;
inherited;
end;

procedure TDeveloper.SetSecondaryLanguages(const Value:TStrings);
begin
FSecondaryLanguages.Assign(Value);
end;

function TDeveloper.GetSecondaryLanguages : TStrings;
begin
result := FSecondaryLanguages;
end;

end.

Usage:
program JeremyDarling;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
Developer;

var
Jeremy : TDeveloper;
i : Integer;
begin
Jeremy := TDeveloper.Create;
try
Jeremy.PrimaryLanguage := 'Pascal';
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('PHP');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('Lua');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('C#');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('C/C++');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('Assembly (Multiple Types');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('English');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('Italian');
Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Add('German');
WriteLn('Jeremy speaks ' + Jeremy.PrimaryLanguage + ' fluently and the following as well (in order of skill):');
for i := 0 to Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages.Count -1 do
WriteLn(#9+Jeremy.SecondaryLanguages[i]);
finally
Jeremy.Free;
end;
end.

Robert Kosek
25-05-2006, 08:52 PM
*smothers his laughter* *chokes* :lol:

Ingemar
26-05-2006, 12:44 PM
English is my primary and Pascal is my secondary. Anything else I can't say more then a few words in. :P
Actually, the big point with Pascal is that it is so close to english, so you hardly need to keep them apart. Well, almost. :wink:

WILL
26-05-2006, 01:54 PM
Hmm... for those of you that did not know english growing up, did you find learning programming was part of a modivator to learning english?

dmantione
26-05-2006, 02:32 PM
Well, I learnt programming on the Commodore 64. Its user manual was completely in Dutch and therefore accessible to me. Of course the C64 itself did talk English and many statements had no meaning for me, for example, I did know what the "READY." prompt did, but did not know the meaning of the word.

I was quite annoyed that Commodore's Programmers Reference Guide was not available in Dutch, which meant that many things of programming the machine, like the Joysticks remained a mystery for me for a long time. I think this period did teach me a few words of English, but it was not a motivator to learn English. It must also be noted that many books and magazines were published in German during that time, English was not so dominant as it is now.

By the time I learnt Pascal I was about 15 years old, and did know a basic level of English. Not having money to buy all these books myself, I did visit the public library quite frequent, and they had good stuff, like Jeff Duntemann's famous book "Turbo Pascal compleet" (Dutch title, don't know English one) and the in the English world quite unknown masterpieces "PC Intern" and "Turbo Pascal Intern" by Michael Tischer (they were translated from German). The last book might have played a role in getting the knowledge to start developing on Free Pascal.

The real pusher for English was actually the internet. When I accessed the internet first in 1996 my English skills were reasonable, but they improved a lot while using it continuously on the internet.

fragle
26-05-2006, 10:16 PM
Lithuanian language is not in the list :( Would it be possible to do some magic and add it? Or should i just choose whatever other language supprted by my thinking unit? ;)

Regarding not knowing english when learning programming - hmm.. i don't think it was big enough motivator for me. Since i started "programming" in zx spectrum's basic, there wasn't much english to learn. the simple "print" or "goto" (with the occasional "new game" and "game over" ;) ) i could ask my parents, but most of the technical literature at the time was written in russian, so it was more of a need to learn that instead of english. But then the internet reversed everything :shock:

grudzio
26-05-2006, 10:52 PM
When I started programming I have already spoken english reasonably well. But I was then nineteen, late start I suppose.

JSoftware
26-05-2006, 11:36 PM
when i started programming i knew a little english but i also grew up in the beginning of the internet age. mostly i would just know that a specific series of characters would produce a specific operation. i didn't know what most of the words meant but i understood the purpose of those and memorized them

Ofcourse i learnt all my programming knowledge at that time through danish books and secondarily through "trial and error" :wink:

WILL
27-05-2006, 12:25 AM
Lithuanian language is not in the list :( Would it be possible to do some magic and add it? Or should i just choose whatever other language supprted by my thinking unit? ;)

:o Added! ;)

Sorry again if I miss languages. There are a ton of 'em and I used a rather crude method of gathering them. :lol:

If one is missing, like before, just ask me and I'll add it and you can vote once I've it. :)

By the way Lithuania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania) looks like a very beautiful country.

rif
29-05-2006, 05:05 PM
I am the first swede! :D Does that mean that I'm the last surviving Pascal game programmer in Sweden? :?
Hejsan Ingemar

Actually there is quite a lot of Delphi programmers in Sweden. Some years ago I recall Anders Ohlsson (from Borland) saying that Sweden and New Zeeland were the two markets with the highest percentage of Delphi compared to other programming languages.

Doei RIF

Ingemar
29-05-2006, 06:16 PM
I am the first swede! :D Does that mean that I'm the last surviving Pascal game programmer in Sweden? :?
Hejsan Ingemar

Actually there is quite a lot of Delphi programmers in Sweden. Some years ago I recall Anders Ohlsson (from Borland) saying that Sweden and New Zeeland were the two markets with the highest percentage of Delphi compared to other programming languages.

Good to hear. I don't know too many myself though, but then, I am primarily a Mac programmer. Let's hope some of those sewdish Delphi users find this place some time.

WILL
29-05-2006, 11:43 PM
Hmm... as more and more members add their primary languages, you can sort of see some interesting statistics here. :)

I figured there would be a lot more german speaking members and notice that there is noit too much exposure to the east-asian countries(China,
Thailand, Japan, South Korea, India) with a rapidly growing computer and tech market over there, it would be nice to have a peice. Perhaps it's just that English just doesn't get around as much in most of asia. :?

tanffn
30-05-2006, 05:11 PM
I am surprised there is only one Hebrew speaking member. More surprising is that 'someone' forgot to add Hebrew to the list even though it is one the ancients languages..

(..actually it didn’t came to me as that of a shock, just trying to shake off the "2 bit apprentice". Speaking of which how come its 2 bit if I have more then 3 posts?)

Firlefanz
31-05-2006, 08:11 AM
I thought we have more germans here. In the old DelphiSanctuary forums there were lots of germans 8)

But we all speak the Pascal Delphi Language. :lol:

Firle

WILL
31-05-2006, 08:23 AM
I thought so too. Considering that there is a huge German Pascal-based community. I guess that doesn't mean that the majority of them can speak english, I guess. :)


But we all speak the Pascal Delphi Language. :lol:

Too true! But I wouldn't want to have to 'speak' it. :lol:

tanffn
31-05-2006, 10:33 AM
Too true! But I wouldn't want to have to 'speak' it. :lol:

and why is that?


Self.ActiveLanguage:= Delphi;
If Sender is TPerson then
If TPerson&#40;Sender&#41;.ActiveLanguage <> Self.ActiveLanguage then
If TPerson&#40;Sender&#41;.ActiveLanguage in Self. LanguageSet then
Self.ActiveLanguage&#58;= TPerson&#40;Sender&#41;.ActiveLanguage
Else
Rise Exception&#40;'unknown protocol'&#41;;

With Sender as TPerson do
Begin
While ActiveChat do
Self.Earbuffer.Add&#40;DataPending&#41;;
Self.Invalidate;
....
End;
End;
wait forgot what my point was.. :?

rif
31-05-2006, 05:15 PM
wait forgot what my point was.. :?
...but you pressed Submit anyway? :? :)

rif
31-05-2006, 05:37 PM
If you want to see where in the world Delphi programmers come from, you can get a world map here:
http://www.frappr.com/delphinautes

Add yourself in too!

tanffn
31-05-2006, 11:21 PM
...but you pressed Submit anyway? :? :)

well, yeah :) done most of the work and since I want to increase my posts count I submitted. This worthless post helps as well :wink:

XProger
08-06-2006, 07:46 PM
I can freely speak Russian on this forum? ;)

не ожидал, что нас так много ;)

Traveler
08-06-2006, 08:57 PM
I can freely speak Russian on this forum? ;)

не ожидал, что нас так много ;)

Будут деиствительно множество русских членов :)

I doubt PGD would benefit from a language switch, given the fact we'd all need to use Babel Fish :)

WILL
08-06-2006, 11:09 PM
Yeah, I think it would help to stick primarily to english as a standard. (Though I'd love to provide translations of my work in other languages, I cannot speak any other. :? Save for a few select words or phrases. I can swear quite fluently in Romanian. :D <-- Romanian Ex-Girlfriend :lol:)

But if you guys want to use Russian amounst other Russians, I guess thats cool. Or if you need a translation of something that doesn't come out right in 'your English' then sure, we programmers are an inventive bunch. :) Well, any language really. I would be happiest if people used languages to increase communication rather than isolate or funnel it. That way everyone benifits and it makes us a happy international community. (Which I'm quite proud of to be honest! ;))

If you guys want to translate any articles featured on PGD, feel free and/or mention it to us and we can see aout hosting translated versions in the near future. I like that idea if people find that to be valuable...?

Robert Kosek
08-06-2006, 11:20 PM
Well, the main problem I have is folks who are discussing something that might be relevant or a tutorial in another language, because automated translations leave alot to be desired.

I know a few snippets of various languages, but I can't really converse in anything but English. I've thought of taking Spanish back up, but I dunno right now. *shrug*

Maybe summarize the discussion in English if it's something that might be handy?

WILL
08-06-2006, 11:32 PM
I tried to learn spanish a short while ago... hard language to learn, I found. :?

Imp5
09-06-2006, 08:20 AM
Откроем ветку "Изучаем Русский Язык" =)
Таким образом, появятся новые люди в gamedev.ru и dev.dtf.ru

Lets create topic "Изучаем Русский Язык" =)
So, new people are welcome to gamedev.ru and dev.dtf.ru (russian gamedev)

savage
09-06-2006, 09:01 AM
I tried to learn spanish a short while ago... hard language to learn, I found. :?

Spanish is almost totally phonetic so I found it quite easy to learn, in comparison to French.
I started learning Chinese about a year ago, now that is very different from Latin based languages, due to it's tonality. But if you approach it as if you are learning to sing a song, I think it it's learnable.

rzcoder
09-06-2006, 09:22 AM
Lets create topic "?à?ß?????†?•?¨ ?ê???±?±?™?®?© ?ü?ß?ª?™" =)
So, new people are welcome to gamdev.ru and dev.dtf.ru (russian gamedev)

Not www.gamdev.ru - www.gamedev.ru :wink:

Sly
09-06-2006, 01:22 PM
I am working on the localised versions of my current project at the moment. Russian is an interesting language to implement on a Playstation 2. :)

savage
09-06-2006, 01:59 PM
So PS2 supports Unicode or is all just rendered bitmaps for the Cyrillic character set?

Imp5
09-06-2006, 03:50 PM
I am working on the localised versions of my current project at the moment. Russian is an interesting language to implement on a Playstation 2. :)

Sly, please, tell more about languages on a Playstation 2.
Are all of fonts texture-based?
How about Chinese and Japanese? As I know, Plastation developers don't like large textures.

Sly
10-06-2006, 05:13 AM
We use font textures that contain only the characters that are required to show the text the game contains. So we do not have bitmaps for every Russian or Asian character. Internally, the game still uses 8-bit ASCII. This keeps memory usage down.

Languages such as English, French, Italian, German and Spanish (known in the industry as EFIGS since it is so common to support those languages) are easy because all their characters exist within the extended ASCII range (32-255). To show Russian or Asian languages that use Unicode, we insert special codes in the text that tells the font renderer to switch to a different font page. The text following the code is still in the standard ASCII range, but since we are using a different font, the images drawn on screen are of different characters.

For example, the text string for 'The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning' in Russian is
<P1>!"#$#%&' <P0>Spyro&#58; <P1>&#40;&#41;*&#41;' %#+#,&#41; and shows on screen as
Сказание Spyro&#58; Новое начало
The <P1> code tells the font renderer to switch to the second font texture. On this font texture, ! is С, " is к, and & is и.

To create this text with the proper codes, we have a tool that takes the translated text in a spreadsheet and converts it to 8-bit ASCII with the appropriate codes, based on the available fonts. If there are any characters in the translated text that we do not have an image for, it gives us a list of the missing characters, we add these to the font, and run the tool again.

I hope that made sense. :)

Imp5
10-06-2006, 06:00 AM
I hope that made sense. :)

Yes, of course =)
Thanks!

MeFDC
10-06-2006, 11:37 AM
And how about Esperanto? :)

P.S. Russian is my native language ;)

dmantione
10-06-2006, 11:47 AM
Well, it would be the ideal language were it not that very few people can speak it.

WILL
11-06-2006, 02:33 AM
Only selfish people speak Esperanto.

"mmmmMi mi mi mi mi mi mi mi..."

:D

Lord_ZealoN
12-06-2006, 11:39 AM
Hey guys, I'm currious about something. Since PGD is an international site and we get members and visitors from around the world, there has to be a lot more people that speak another language than those that can just speak English.

So what are your OTHER languages?

(If I missed a major one, let me know! ;))

4 spanish votes ....uhmmm....

rzcoder
13-06-2006, 01:48 PM
Russian:English 19:16
Ueahh!

Dan
13-06-2006, 02:37 PM
I get the feeling that there are quite a few russian "pascal-speaking" programmers around :wink:
всем русским превед! :D

Lord_ZealoN
13-06-2006, 03:01 PM
I get the feeling that there are quite a few russian "pascal-speaking" programmers around :wink:
всем русским превед! :D

yep. Pascal/Delphi is more "european". As you can see..all the webs and users (well, all not) about delphi/glscene/freepascal etc..are from North-Europa

Fcw
18-06-2006, 05:45 AM
hmm,i think some chinese may activity in the forum,but i have seem only one,what a pity!

WILL
19-06-2006, 12:58 AM
And Korean too. :) But no Japanese. :? Or at least none that have voted on this poll.

I was a bit supprised to see that someone put down 'Scots Gaelic' though. Considering that it's even more rare than 'Irish'. (known as just 'Gaelic' aswell I believe) Some might even consider it a dying language. Since everyone speaks English only in the British Isles now. So as far as I know anyhow. :P

If you have any other Chinese programmer friends bring them to the site too! :)

cairnswm
19-06-2006, 09:01 AM
I was a bit supprised to see that someone put down 'Scots Gaelic' though.

Maybe AliMonster is back?

WILL
17-07-2006, 10:16 AM
Well if this trend continues and no more English speaking members vote, I'll just have to change the site to a Russian language site...

;)


So far we have....

Top 5 Primary Languages for PGD Members:

Russian 19% ( 23 )
English 15% ( 19 )
Dutch 8% ( 8 )
Spanish 5% ( 7 )
German 5% ( 6 )

godbeast
17-07-2006, 10:46 AM
6th Polish [5] - 4% ain't that bad... but could be alot better, since languages based on pascal syntax were extremly popular in Poland. There are certainly more than 5 people in FPC polish forum. Greetz to Russians :D

tanffn
17-07-2006, 11:38 AM
In Israel I find my self defending Delphi repeatedly, usually to “experts” that never even used it. :(
What is the Delphi “luxury” status in your country?

godbeast
17-07-2006, 02:35 PM
Well it's hard to say. Many people still stick to the old Turbo Pascal, but the tendension is to switch to "something" newwer. Delphi books are very common, second place after C++, so a great number of people choose Delphi. If someone says that can code and it's not any net language then it'll probably be object pascal or just TP. If it's about commercial side, most of small software firms choose to pay for Borland's Delphi, this is for programs like bureau managment, sales databases etc.

For example, me:) I have so-so Delphi knowledge, but I've been sitting in Turbo Pascal since I had my first computer. Therefore, I switched to FPC and I'm really satisfied with it. And I'm sure there are more people who went that way.

If it's about oop - cpp, I think that cpp is more popular among younger folks who are just getting started. However pascal is "sometimes" taught in schools.

Ofcourse there are discusions like you mentioned, but in my opinion, sides are about fifty-fifty:)

WILL
17-07-2006, 05:49 PM
I think part of the problem is that some of those "experts" are Pascal programmers too. :lol:

There is a lot of myth and misinformation about Object Pascal... such as that it's called Delphi, just because some wacko in Borland decided to rename the company Inprise and change the name again to Kylix...

But before I get on a 'Borland screwing up what it started rant', I think that it's important for the story to get around tothe more influential people. You know the ones that they cannot dispute simply because this is where they are getting their knowlage from in the first place. Yup, schools! ;)

Personally though I think sites like Wikipedia and sites/forums with uninformed staff/contributers only hurt the public opinion of Object Pascal. Some countries generally get it, but then again they don't have the polulation saturation that ones like Canada and the US do.


What is it about the human race in that the greater the population the lower percentage of intelligence people?

grudzio
17-07-2006, 09:47 PM
What is it about the human race in that the greater the population the lower percentage of intelligence people?
It is because the total inteligence on this planet is constant :wink: