Can you speak

But instead of the labels being familiar words, you were faced with this version I created , which is entirely identical to the original except that the source code is based on Russian rather than English. In theory, you can make a programming language out of any symbols.

The computer doesn't care. The fact that programming languages often resemble English words like body or if is a convenient accommodation for our puny human meatbrains, which are much better at remembering commands that look like words we already know. But only some of us already know the words of these commands: those of us who speak English.

The "initial promise of the web" was only ever a promise to its English-speaking users, whether native English-speaking or with access to the kind of elite education that produces fluent second-language English speakers in non-English-dominant areas.

I'm not even asking whether we should make programming languages in small, underserved languages although that would be cool. Even huge languages that have extensive literary traditions and are used as regional trade languages, like Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic, still aren't widespread as languages of code.

I've found four programming languages that are widely available in multilingual versions. Not Four 4. Two of these four languages are specially designed to teach children how to code: Scratch and Blockly.

Scratch has even done a study showing that children who learn to code in a programming language based on their native language learn faster than those who are stuck learning in another language.

What happens when these children grow up? Adults, who are not exactly famous for how much they enjoy learning languages, have two other well-localized programming languages to choose from: Excel formulas and Wiki markup. Yes, you can command your spreadsheets with formulas based on whatever language your spreadsheet program's interface is in. It's probably not the first thing you think of when you think of coding, but a spreadsheet can technically be made into a Turing machine , and it does show that there's a business case for localized versions.

Similarly, you can edit Wikipedia and other wikis using implementations of Wiki markup based on many different languages. The basic features of Wiki markup are language-agnostic such as putting square brackets [[around a link]] , but more advanced features do use words, and those words are in the local language. In addition to these four widely available, multilingual programming languages, there are several dozen, maybe a hundred or so, programming languages that are available in a language or two other than English, such as Qalb Arabic , Chinese Python , farsinet Persian , Hindawi Programming System Bengali, Gujarati, and Hindi , and even a version of Perl but in Latin.

I'm trying out the ninety day trial to learn some Russian and I will pay for the privilege once I reach the end of the trial. Select a language. Spanish Latin America.

English American. Chinese Mandarin. English British. Filipino Tagalog. Persian Farsi. Portuguese Brazil. Spanish Spain. For Enterprise. For Schools. Do You Speak English in French. Learning French. Try Our Award-Winning App. Learn French. French Expressions. French Idioms. French Love Words. French Words for Beauty. How to Speak French. What people say about us. Rosetta Stone has got it going on. Thank you. Last edited by a moderator: Jun 16, Hi, Would you plz please help me find out the possible difference between them?

B oth? Click to expand Hi, Would you please help me find out the possible difference between them? They both look fine and seem equally polite to me. The only thing I'd say is that "Can you speak English? Thank you both for the explanations first. I am new here ,thanks for your reminding of the rules here. I 'll take some time to read it later. I prefer "Do you speak English?