[HN Gopher] Show HN: Pakhi - Bangla Programming Language
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Show HN: Pakhi - Bangla Programming Language
Author : shafin_
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-03-06 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| mottosso wrote:
| Hold up, how is this different from programming in e.g. Python or
| Javascript with Bangla characters? Why does it need to be a
| different syntax too? Can I use English characters with the Pakhi
| programming langauge?
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| _redacted_
| mottosso wrote:
| My mistake, I got confused. Corrected. But my question still
| stands.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| No worries, I redacted my comment. Forgot that this ain't
| Reddit for a moment.
|
| I think the lexer and parser won't work if you write `if`
| instead of `ydi`. Just as the opposite won't work in Java.
| rayiner wrote:
| Cool project! A bit off topic, but I'm a bad Bangladeshi and
| never learned the alphabet. Any sources you recommend to learn?
| I'm not great with (human) languages to begin with, but the
| character set is a real hurdle.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I'm currently learning Bangla and there are a few basic apps
| for iOS that present the letter along with it's name,
| pronunciation, and how it is to be written (as in how to piece
| together the strokes to write the letter). It's definitely
| geared towards kids, but the one I'm using is called BorKnow.
|
| Also I'm using a book by Hanne Ruth Thompson called Beginner's
| Bengali that does a good job at introducing the script.
| rayiner wrote:
| Thanks! May I ask what prompted you to learn Bangla?
| Rincevant wrote:
| Yes I love it
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible for the programming languages to take
| advantage of the unique features in some languages, e.g.
| Agglutination in Hungarian and Turkish. Has any study being done
| to that effect?
|
| I love the concept, this project has the potential to bring a
| whole new demography to the fold of programming.
| tsegratis wrote:
| Since RPN is front page, let me note that Turkish can be viewed
| as an RPN language -- the verb comes at the end
|
| (although agglutination etc make it not quite so clear cut)
|
| The agglutination is very similar to properties on structs
|
| object.time.by.ability.duration
|
| Except that there is a fixed standard order, and every object
| (word) responds in the same way. -- Very similar to an
| inheritance hierarchy from a single object :)
|
| A difference would be that every subclass a.k.a word has a
| meaningful way to respond to the dimensions of duration,
| ability, startPoint, byWho, and a few others that are not
| easily expressible in English but very convenient
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Bangla also is a subject-object-verb language and I hadn't
| thought of it like RPN before!
| qyi wrote:
| I see programming as manipulating a bunch of semantic objects.
| Syntax is just the (bad) user interface to this. This shouldn't
| rely on a natural spoken language at all. For example instead
| of `case` or `if`, there could (and should) just be symbols for
| such common things. Languages like Java have a lot of English
| keywords to represent flaky, redundant concepts with bad
| semantics. It's also a bit cumbersome that these languages
| often prevent you from naming variables with these already
| taken words. Seems actually like every 10 years people realize
| they didn't need all those English sentences in their languages
| if you look at a lineage like COBOL -> Visual Basic -> Java ->
| JavaScript or whatever 2010 fad.
| tsegratis wrote:
| An interesting concept from Turkish is each word can directly
| give you all (or single) objects that do or can respond to that
| action yap -- make yapan -- the one who
| makes yapanlar -- all those who make yapilan --
| then one being made yapilanlar -- all those being made
|
| This would be like functions having a standard way to return
| lists of all objects they're related to
|
| Or direct solving of some complex queries like 'Who can open
| this door?'
|
| In Turkish that would be open_this_door_an, where '_an' is the
| standard way to get a list of all objects capable of doing it
| gerdesj wrote:
| * yap: make * yapan: maker * yapanlar: makers
| * yapilan: made (I think, "then one being made" doesn't make
| sense to me) * yapilanlar: OK you got me there! It may
| be another job for "made" or goods or a synonym eg: objets
| d'art. Yes, I did just use three languages as my own in one
| sentence.
|
| I'm not a linguist. I've managed to fail French and German
| and yet pass Latin (whatever the heck that is!) at O level
| (old UK exam at age 16.)
|
| I don't think we have quite the same concept you are
| describing, in English as such but I think we might come
| close. You can generally take a verb and turn it into a
| closely related adjective, gerund and gerundive. Anyway, if
| there isn't a word available in English, we simply steal
| (sorry, borrow) someone else's - simples! I bet I routinely
| use a few Turkish words without even realising it. English is
| a proud mongrel - it was an amalgam from day 1.
|
| (edit: I've forgotten how to do a list hereabouts - sorry,
| Ooh two spaces)
| hctaw wrote:
| "Makee" and "makees" aren't in the dictionary but native
| speakers would probably understand what you mean
| mmohtasim wrote:
| I love it. But it makes me sad that 5 of the 7 primitive types
| are from english. You can replace list with talika or something
| like that.
| snissn wrote:
| As an only English speaker - this is lovely to see!
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| While I 100% applaud the effort - and I absolutely love the idea
| of languages in non-English languages - you should be aware that
| phonetically (and if you drop the 'h'), the name is a racist term
| in the UK at least.
| u801e wrote:
| There are plenty of terms in languages that are common words in
| that language but may sound like different and possibly
| offensive words in other languages. But that doesn't mean we
| should avoid using those words.
| _s wrote:
| Isn't "Paki" just shortened for "Pakistani"? I never knew the
| word itself to be considered racist; but it's definitely been
| used often in a racist / degenerative context and manner.
| rayiner wrote:
| It doesn't sound the same spoken. Pakhi (bird) is pronounced
| like "pa" (as in dad) + "khee" (as in "fee" but starting with
| an aspirated k). It's not pronounced like the racist term,
| which is pronounced in Britain like "pack" + "e."
| yowlingcat wrote:
| This is an ignorant statement. Pakhi means "bird" in Bengali.
| Check the translation.
|
| Edit: To all the downvoters, I truly hope that ignorance is
| bliss for you. Maybe learn another language before you project
| your ressentiment tinged identity-politics idiocy onto
| something you don't even understand.
|
| [1]
| https://translate.google.com/?sl=bn&tl=en&text=pakhi&op=tran...
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| You're probably being downvoted for the 1st sentence. And for
| the Edit.
|
| Why is it ignorant? OP is just stating a fact. Is OP the PC
| police, or is he the canary trying to warn that the "cancel
| mob" might attack this project if they took offense at the
| name, I can't tell.
|
| You saying it means "bird" is also just a fact...
| darkhorse13 wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as to say it is ignorant, but just
| imagine if some english speaking person named their
| programming language or product "Bird", and one of the top
| comments brought up the fact that it was similar to a
| racial slur in their language.
|
| I'm not saying it is wrong to point this out, but it must
| be slightly disheartening for the author of the language.
| And more importantly, Bangladesh was literally called East
| Pakistan, so I'm sure whoever made this is aware of the
| actual racial slur.
|
| Also please note, I'm actually Bangladeshi, so I'm not
| speaking for a group I don't represent here.
| naeemtee wrote:
| Pakhi means bird in Bangla. Bangladeshis also used to be
| Pakistani, so they're probably fine. ;)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Also in Urdu "pankhi" - bird/winged thing. Speaking as one, I
| think the P***s will be fine with this one.
| vr46 wrote:
| Yes, non-white Englishman here cringed when I saw the name
| having been on the receiving end of the term many times.
| ksaj wrote:
| I think it is we who decided it is a racist word. I was a guest
| instructor in a university class in Islamabad, and people there
| used that word quite casually. It surprised me how often I
| heard it, but also that it was never treated in a negative
| manner. An important differentiator is that they weren't using
| it as a label to call each other maliciously, but more to
| denote that something is _from_ Pakistan.
|
| Perhaps at least in this case, intent has everything to do with
| its interpretation. I still don't use the word because that
| nuance is too easily missed.
|
| Probably both cultures (which apparently are directly related,
| in terms of overlapping histories) are aware of words like
| this, and not likely to confuse them for ill intent. A little
| like how Canadian Anglophone children make fun of the French
| word for 'seal', but Francophones who also use the English
| swear word that it sounds like clearly know when you're
| swearing, versus when you're talking about a seal.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| One more casualty of the absence of retroflex consonants in
| English. Before you jumped the gun, you should've taken into
| account the difference between 'Ka' and 'kha' consonants.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Erm, I think you are confusing retroflex consonants with
| aspirated consonants. "Kha" is just the aspirated version of
| "Ka". English doesn't have two different alphabets for these
| two different sounds and which one is used depends on the
| context (king vs sink). Indic languages on the other hand
| treat these as completely different sounds and there are many
| pairs of words which differ only in the non-
| aspiration/aspiration of one particular alphabet.
|
| Interestingly, even though the IPA has the aspiration
| modifier letter, the transcriptions that you find in
| dictionaries seldom care to use them. For instance, the
| Cambridge dictionary lists the pronunciation of the word king
| as /kING/ but almost everyone actually says /kkIn/.
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/king
| z92 wrote:
| Consider keywords :
|
| phert -> uttr
|
| phaaN -> kaaj
|
| For hashmap indexes, consider
|
| name["key"]-> name.key
|
| And while initializing
|
| "name" -> "value"
|
| consider syntax
|
| name : "value"
|
| Less typing.
| sagman wrote:
| Khub bhalo laglo dekhe. Consider simplifying primitives? _sNkhyaa
| -> n etc.
| gumby wrote:
| I've used programming languages with keywords in other languages
| but they don't feel simpler to me. I am comfortable using
| "Fortissimo" even though I don't speak Italian, and I view
| programming keywords the same way.
|
| I would be interested in a programming language that reflected
| the grammar and structure of a non-English human language.
| Procedural languages are quite "englishy", and while production
| (logic) languages aren't, they don't really feel like any human
| language I've used.
|
| I think there's an interesting line of research in looking into
| programming metaphors and syntax drawn from non-PIE-family
| languages.
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| We English speakers are incredibly lucky that programming
| languages first emerged based on our native language. It's easy
| to imagine scenarios where the first programming languages were
| based on Mandarin or Bangla or Hindi keywords.
| zokier wrote:
| > It's easy to imagine scenarios where the first programming
| languages were based on Mandarin or Bangla or Hindi keywords.
|
| I don't know. To me that seems pretty far fetched idea.
|
| Russian, or German, maybe? But I don't really see how the
| computer revolution could have started in SE Asia without
| fairly major changes in history
| aramachandran7 wrote:
| How common are programming languages designed with base languages
| other than english? This is the first one i've seen.
| bobochan wrote:
| This is a different take, but I have always been a huge fan of
| Damian Conway's Lingua::Romana::Perligata, a thought experiment
| in writing Perl in Latin.
|
| Just a taste from the documentation: "To simplify the mind-
| numbingly complex rules of declension and conjugation that
| govern inflexions in Latin, Perligata treats all user-defined
| scalar and array variables as neuter nouns of the second
| declension -- singular for scalars, plural for arrays."
| krylon wrote:
| I vaguely remember reading about an esoteric programming
| language that was based on Klingon. IIRC, it was a functional
| language. (-:
|
| But I do not speak or read or write Klingon, so I never looked
| at it, and I do not remember the name, either. It did make me
| chuckle, though.
| ahamez wrote:
| IIRC, AppleScript was once usable in languages other than
| English.
| gabordemooij wrote:
| Well there is Citrine: https://citrine-lang.org/ - it offers a
| specialized version for over 110 human languages.
| dmt0 wrote:
| Apparently there are a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
| English-based_programming_...
| lappet wrote:
| This is super cool. Although I cannot read Bangla, is it possible
| to extend this to other Indian languages, like say Hindi?
| lvass wrote:
| I can barely understand anything in that page though I wish you
| success and offer this Edsger W. Dijkstra quote, in good faith,
| for reflection.
|
| "Projects promoting programming in 'natural language' are
| intrinsically doomed to fail."
| hvocode wrote:
| Not sure how that's relevant, given that it appears to be
| expressing the usual language constructs but not in English or
| via a Latin alphabet. A couple minutes with Google translate
| made that apparent.
| fermienrico wrote:
| Programming language is more abstract than mere collection of
| glyphs. I am curious if the glyphs were replaced by English
| alphabet, what are the special aspects of this language?
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