Re: Computer Language Question

  On Sunday 24 November 2002 08:06 pm, David Peterson wrote:
 > GSI friend of mine asked me this the other day, and I didn't know the
 > answer, so I thought I'd ask you all: Has anyone here, or have you ever
 > heard of anyone who has, created a computer language whose base was a
 > language other than English? E.g., what would C++ look like if it were
 > written by people who spoke Basque? Would there be differences? Any
 > info related to that I'd be much appreciative to hear about. :)


There is a perl module by Damian Conway based on Latin grammar which is
described at:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata.html

It is a well thought out paper which looks at how to make a programming
language that uses inflections rather than position to denote lexical
roles.

Also, while working as a Unix sys admin and studying Mongolian I have
thought about (but not yet worked on) a unix shell based on Mongolian
grammar. At least a little bit of it. Mongolian is strongly SOV, and
unix is basically VSO. So instead of a normal unix command like:
mv file1 file2  -- move file1 into file2
it would read like:
file1 file2 mv
Should be easy to do, but I've never gotten around to it.

David Stokes