Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 01:35:43 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710280635.BAA15678@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Emil Sit Sender: Lojban list From: Emil Sit Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: "Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}" X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 28 Oct 1997 10:05:05 +0800." <9710280209.AA21607@MIT.EDU> Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1171 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 28 01:36:01 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU > I do sometimes communicate with my colleagues in computer languages > for fun. We may write or even speak in computer languages, like this: > > while (sleepy) { > if (alarm_clock_rings) { > switch_off(alarm_clock); > } While certainly syntactic C, I'm not convinced that your example is any different from English. It feels like English to me certainly. For me to consider something "speaking in C", I'd like some variable declarations or procedure declarations, or even a loop... On a somewhat related note, people certainly use computer language idioms in everyday communication. One common example would be: #include in Usenet postings. Among many people I know, to say "food-p" or to write "(food-p)" is a query as to whether anyone is hungry. (i.e. we evaluate to #t if so.) As another side comment, if this list were moderated and I were moderating, I'd probably stop letting through messages on this thread at this point. :) -- Emil Sit / Bronx Science '95, MIT '99 -- ESG, SIPB, Athena Consulting PGP KeyID: 0xE63561E9 / Fingerprint: A68FD0693EDABA19 2671EC1F22498F58