English is simple until you try to pronounce it. Cough, bough, enough, dough, thought.
And until you try to spell it. Beaurocracy, fondue, diarrhoea (UK version). No, diarrhoea is not the UK version of fondue, although I guess there might be some resemblance. In contrast, you can learn the pronunciation rules of Italian in a day and then read it aloud correctly, albeit with a foreign accent. It's a far more regular language than English, probably because it has far fewer influences. English probably won because its speakers don't bother to learn local languages. I think that win happened before Hitler. It was widely known during WWII that there were many Germans who could speak English better than the natives, and that just can't happen übernicht. On Apr 19, 2012 12:27 PM, "Fabrizio Giudici" <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:59:49 +0200, Casper Bang <[email protected]> > wrote: > > The point of an open spec is to offer a standard everybody is free to use. >> Without standards, it's pretty hard to coordinate and cooperate across >> system boundaries. As such, a language is no different from a protocol. >> JavaScript is another example of an open standard under Ecma (why it's >> also >> called EcmaScript), which allows many different browsers and none of which >> has to pay licence fees to NetScape. Don't get me wrong here, I think it's >> great to have a de-facto implementation (OpenJDK) of the JSE standard, but >> I think it's a crying shame you alternatives are forced out (Apache >> Harmony) since I have a preference for open standards allowing for many >> different implementations. C# (Ecma-334) has .NET/CLR (Microsoft >> propriatary) Rotor (Microsoft Shared Source), Mono (open-source), dotGNU >> (open-source, dead). >> > > Generally speaking I agree. But I was talking from the point of view of > Android. Google's needs were to build Android from scratch or reuse, > adapting, the OpenJDK. Furthermore, I doubt they are really interested in > making Android an open specification so other independent implementations > would be created. > > Sure there is, I just explained it a few times. It's the same reason you >> and I are arguing in English here; it's not that the English language >> is particular superior or that we couldn't invent a better one, it's the >> fact that it allows a Dane and an Italian to readily communicate. >> > > Well, English *is* particular superior for this task. While it is > certainly true that English spread mainly because USA won the II World War, > I don't know about Danish, but I can guarantee that Italian is > syntactically more complex than English. It's definitely easier for an > Italian to learn English than for a English-speaking person to learn > Italian, especially if we're talking of a simple, introductive but already > productive level. Perhaps there are other natural languages that have the > same property, I'm not saying that English is the simplest in absolute. So > we can say that Java is spread also because Sun and other corporates > marketing efforts in the '90s and early 00's, but it also has some > definitely good properties. On the other hand, keeping this metaphor, I > could add that while Esperanto or Interlingua are possibly even simpler, > they fail to spread because they lack a sponsor. You need both things: good > properties and a sponsor. > > > -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > [email protected] > http://tidalwave.it - http://fabriziogiudici.it > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscribe@** > googlegroups.com <javaposse%[email protected]>. > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** > group/javaposse?hl=en <http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en>. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
