[HN Gopher] If PHP Were British (2011)
___________________________________________________________________
If PHP Were British (2011)
Author : susam
Score : 402 points
Date : 2022-12-02 09:33 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aloneonahill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aloneonahill.com)
| taffronaut wrote:
| "Hello World" should obviously be "This is London calling"
| digitalsankhara wrote:
| Brilliant! Thank you for that.
| pizlonator wrote:
| You had me at perchance/otherwise.
|
| Fucking brilliant!
| Oras wrote:
| "Sorry" as a default prefix
| notahacker wrote:
| I think "sorry" should be a suffix and "excuse me" the prefix
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| As with the "please" keyword in Intercal, the compiler would
| have to enforce its use but not over-use.
| pjc50 wrote:
| As someone who learned on BBC basic, every time I do graphics
| programming I am mildly irked that APIs use "color" rather than
| "colour".
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the amount of cool tips I see to help programmers save a couple
| characters in writing make me think if it were colour people
| would complain about the extra work.
| hoosieree wrote:
| In new code, compromise with "coulor".
| npteljes wrote:
| I similarly never knew whether to use gray or grey. Fun fact,
| CSS, for one, supports both: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/CSS/named-color...
| cjtrowbridge wrote:
| I started writing an includable file to make all of these
| functions work, but I can't figure out a way to override or
| replicated if/then as perchance/otherwise.
|
| With something like string_replace() it's easy to simply write a
| new function and redirect the parameters.
|
| Is it possible to replicate the way if/then works with other
| code; like not just a function but then a series of code blocks
| in braces?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I propose keep calm {} carry on {} for exception handling
| david422 wrote:
| So Intellij has been getting super smart with their IDE's. I
| wonder if they could just add a visual display over this. Every
| "if" statement could be displayed as "perchance" etc.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Not sure why this is so polite. I think you're more likely to get
|
| the_fuck_you_want() { thats_right_keep_walking() }
| mjburgess wrote:
| The ideology behind the extremely contemporary belief amongst
| brits that "s" is a British spelling is quite strange to me.
|
| _z_ is the British spelling and always has been, _s_ is French
| and was lifted from French. And made wide-spread by British
| newspapers in the 60s+.
|
| What is interesting in this case is this author goes all the way
| back to "connexion" without realising that contemporary to that
| spelling would be "specialize"
| mathieuh wrote:
| I've always understood the "rule" to be Greek-origin words take
| 'ize' and Latin-origin words take 'ise'. Personally I would
| rather have one or the other consistently.
|
| I use 'ise' in all cases by default, but if I know my audience
| is American I use 'ize'. I'm not precious about it.
| Veen wrote:
| The z spelling is influenced by Greek, I believe. I think it's
| fair to say -ise is characteristically British, since it's
| widely used here and not in the U.S.
| lapser wrote:
| According to Wikipedia[0], using "ise" is still the British
| spelling, as well as Australian spelling. However, the Oxford
| spelling of these words are using "ize".
|
| After a customary search, I can't seem to find any sources that
| suggest using "ise" might be French, and made popular by
| British newspapers, besides the below Wikipedia article
| claiming newspapers using the "ise" spelling, instead of "ize".
| I'd love to see some sources on this if you have any.
|
| I grew up in Britain, and have been spelling using the "ise"
| version, but since I've started working for a US company, I've
| started using "ize" everywhere since it's just easier. In
| addition, it's still accurate British, when using the Oxford
| spelling. Although, it did take me a while to get accustomed to
| changing my writing.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
| andai wrote:
| >Connexion was still the house style of The Times of London
| until the 1980s
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English...
| siquick wrote:
| It's not as clear cut as you make out. There are some specific
| verbs that should always take the 's' in British English - for
| example, analyse (in American English, analyze). And then there
| are verbs that even in American English should always take the
| 's', like revise and exercise.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I guess its mostly just amusing that cosmopolitans who are
| keen to appear "at home with everyone" display the same
| cultural parochialism as everyone else -- namely even
| doubling down on historical _French_ spelling (over
| historical _English_ ) simply to avoid association with the
| US.
|
| Similarly, of course, the scottish adopt historical
| englishisms; and so on, and so on.
|
| With `z` however it's a project of those who'd claim to be
| above such.
| grey-area wrote:
| Nonzenze.
| mc32 wrote:
| This is like trying to figure out what is more authentic
| pronunciation: /keltik/ or /seltik/ for C/Keltic.
| dspillett wrote:
| There seems to be a perception in some that in cases where s
| and z are both officially valid (most of the time), that z is a
| vulgar Americanism (nasty pointy letter with a harsh sound,
| both of which stand out compared to the more refined smooth
| shape & sound of our lovely s!), when, as you point out, z is
| historically more correct in "proper" English. I don't think it
| is that they see s as english-english as such, but that they
| see z as american-english so go with s as an act of identity
| preservation.
|
| I prefer -ise over -ize, I'm not sure why, maybe it fits better
| with how I pronounce/emphasise things when speaking. Though it
| isn't the case that either is more right in modern English:
| while -ize predates -ise, for about half a millennium it has
| been the case that both are valid so it is just down to
| preference.
|
| Which ever you pick, just be consistent. There are some cases
| where one is considered valid and which one varies by variant
| of English, such as analyse/analyze, which is probably part of
| where the s-is-English comes from - applying a specific
| exception widely as if it were a rule.
|
| There are a few things that many are convinced of about English
| which turn out to be quite false: the singular "they" being
| another one that has caused much discussion in recent years, or
| the not-splitting-infinitives thing which some are still
| determined to boldly hold on to.
| oorza wrote:
| Star Trek is solely and wholly responsible for the death of
| the unsplit infinitive.
|
| TO BOLDLY GO? No, motherfuckers, you go boldly.
| dspillett wrote:
| I will continue to defiantly split infinitives any time I
| like.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's what you get when you take literary freedom and
| democratize it.
| croes wrote:
| Isn't the else in an if-else-statement because of germans?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25406211
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I learned some BCPL before I ever touched C, simply because the
| system I was working on came with a BCPL compiler and not a C one
| (it was CP/M). BCPL always seemed to have a certain Englishness
| to it which I only noticed when I came later to other languages
| of US origin.
| ksangeelee wrote:
| The '$' being used in variable names I think originates from the
| word 'string', from when it was necessary to differentiate types
| of variable in the code. It never related to currency.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| A bit like people who get annoyed by the word soccer, an
| English word originally to distinguish Association Football
| (soccer) from Rugby Football (rugger) and other codes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My new favorite piss take of this debate:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGVKVTcfy2E
| bearmode wrote:
| Worth noting that this word also has class connotations, in
| that only toffs at Oxford called it soccer. Working class
| people never did.
| martin_a wrote:
| I really think you shouldn't take the article, its conclusions
| and recommendations too serious.
| dools wrote:
| You mean ... seriously?
| elric wrote:
| I always assumed it originated with Perl, where $ is for
| scalars and @ for arrays.
| avian wrote:
| I'm sure this use of $ character is much older than Perl.
|
| One counter-example I know first hand: Sinclair ROM BASIC
| uses $ for denoting strings, in both variable and function
| names.
|
| The one I have in a Spectrum is copyrighted 1982, around 5
| years before first Perl was released.
|
| I'm sure there are older examples like this.
| elric wrote:
| You're right, seems like this usage goes back to at least
| 1964 in BASIC.
| dspillett wrote:
| Always amusing that when we try be overtly fancy, or Americans
| try to sound more English, we tend to latch onto things the
| language purloined from the French, such as nouveau. And purloin.
| Lio wrote:
| Please, using French borrow words to sound more cultured is so
| passe.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| Careful there, you might be committing a faux pas.
|
| I prefer to use ad hoc and sui generis Latin phrases to make
| myself seem more intelligent than I really am.
| bombcar wrote:
| I love when French words are borrowed and repronounced so
| you end up with Grand Prix being "Grand Pricks" instead of
| "Gran pree".
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| You would so, so totally love how the residents of
| Versailles, Indiana, US, pronounce their town's name. I'm
| very 'Merican and it makes me want to bang my head into
| to a wall.
| bombcar wrote:
| A number of city names become shibboleths themselves -
| things like Spokane being pronounced "spow cane" instead
| of being spoken as spokan.
|
| Of course if you go back far enough, even the original
| place names of many places are simply "bastardized"
| versions of the original. It's how Latin becomes Italian
| over time.
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| die() -> rip()
| Oras wrote:
| exit() -> fuckoff()
| kapitanjakc wrote:
| Centre Center Colour Color Ize ise
|
| These were very confusing to learn/ unlearn
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I assume this is some kind of satire; but satire usually has some
| kind of point to make, and I don't get the point of this article.
| felixthehat wrote:
| Us regular human beings call this 'fun' if that's any help to
| you?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| OK, well that's how I read it: a jokey article (i.e. fun)
| that looks like satire (something that bites), but without
| any actual satirical bite or point. But perhaps I'm wasn't
| sharp enough to get the satirical point. And I didn't see it
| explained in the comments.
|
| If it's just ragging on PHP's deficiencies, (a) that's old-
| hat, and (b) most of what the author teases about isn't
| actually a problem with the language.
| felixthehat wrote:
| It's just the author's dry, tongue-in-cheek British humour.
| He's not really attacking anything - just a bit of fun
| using English instead of American English.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The author is British? OK, well I'm surprised. Nobody in
| Britain uses the kinds of phrases he makes fun of. I
| enjoy dry, tongue-in-cheek humour; it's my stock-in-trade
| (except when I might be talking to foreigners, like here
| on HN; it can easily misfire).
|
| I read the author as being a non-British English speaker.
| DaveChild wrote:
| > The author is British?
|
| What ho, old bean. Yes, I am.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Haha! Well, evidently I read it wrong!
|
| > What ho, old bean.
|
| That's Jeeves and Wooster. And that was itself a parody.
|
| I use some archaic phrases; I refer to "chaps", some
| disgraceful act being "a bit off", my hat is my "titfer"
| (cockney rhyming slang hasn't been restricted to cockneys
| since the 50s). But I don't pretend to be an Edwardian
| bourgeois twit, like the ridiculous Rees-Mogg.
|
| I'm sorry I didn't get your humour; it's a drag to have
| to explain a joke.
| jnsie wrote:
| The "monty php" comment is great!
| mypastself wrote:
| If it were from South London, you might replace "sibling" with
| "bruv" and "true" with "believe"...
| DaveChild wrote:
| That's amazing.
|
| I did consider suggesting replacing the semi-colon with "innit"
| at the end of each line, but it didn't really fit with the
| theme.
| mihaaly wrote:
| : ))
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's the Canadian dollar sign though. You can tell because it's
| worth a bit less.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I actually prefer these: PHP, on the other hand,
| is full to bursting with abbreviations and acronyms which are
| entirely unnecessary: str_replace() is_int()
| var_dump() The following changes should improve
| things: string_replace() is_integer()
| variable_dump()
|
| perl_regex_foo() might even be better than "preg" whereas
| everyone knows what regex means but "preg" isn't obvious at all.
| At this point who cares that it came from perl it should really
| just be regex_foo()
| mh- wrote:
| the "Perl" distinction is because they are PCRE (Perl-
| compatible Regular Expressions) - PHP used to* have ereg() and
| family, which used POSIX Regular Expressions.
|
| * <5.3, 8 years ago
| jrpelkonen wrote:
| If PHP has "continue", it should be
| "thank_you_sir_may_i_have_another".
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| You know what? Compared to the bland and non-self-evident
| "protected", "hereditary" is a remarkably apt name. I'm not sure
| the concept itself is that useful, but if you have to have it,
| why not.
| Grayskull wrote:
| As someone who has not done enough object oriented programing
| not to confuse "private" and "protected" on every occasion I
| would welcome this to all languages.
| cardanome wrote:
| I actually tanked one of my first job interviews because I
| totally blanked out and forgot what the difference between
| private and protected was.
|
| I just never used it in practice. And I still don't.
| 9dev wrote:
| That actually comes in useful as soon as you write library
| code, but seldomly in application code (at least mine): You'd
| use protected for internal methods intended to be used, and
| probably overwritten, by children classes. This allows
| defining internal extension points to customise the behaviour
| of a class.
|
| Take a response caching middleware, for example, that uses a
| CacheStrategy class to control the behaviour of the cache.
| There's an interface, so we can depend on it in the
| middleware: interface CacheStrategyInterface
| { public function shouldCache(Request $request,
| Response $response): bool; }
|
| and there's a default implementation, shipping with the
| library, which works for 90% of use cases:
| class DefaultStrategy implements CacheStrategyInterface {
| public function shouldCache(Request $request, Response
| $response): bool { if ( !
| $this->isMethodCachable($request)) { return
| false; } return
| $this->isSuccessful($response); } //
| This method can be modified by user code: Maybe they
| implemented // an API with a `"success": false` in
| the response body, despite // the status code?
| There's no way to know that, let alone provide a //
| configuration switch for every possible failure condition in
| user // code implementing our middleware.
| protected function isSuccessful(Response $response): bool {
| return $response->isSuccessful() ||
| $response->isRedirection(); } // This
| method shall not be modified: Whether an HTTP request may be
| // cached is defined by specification, not implementation.
| private function isMethodCachable(Request $request): bool {
| return $request->isMethodCacheable(); } }
|
| Users may extend this implementation, and override the
| `isSuccessful` method with their own implementation used to
| check whether a response handled by the app was actually
| successful (and thus should be added to the cache).
|
| This method isn't significant from the outside of the class -
| it would add needless weight to the API contract of our
| library. But still, there's value in allowing users building
| their own caching strategy to override it with their own
| checks. Such an implementation might look like this:
| class CustomStrategy extends DefaultStrategy {
| protected function isSuccessful(Response $response): bool {
| return $response->body('success', false) === true; }
| }
|
| There's no boilerplate here, no need to reimplement the whole
| shouldCache method, when only a single, granular, override is
| enough. And that is why protected can be helpful :)
|
| (This was taken from a Laravel library I maintain. If you
| want to check the full example, see here:
| https://github.com/matchory/response-
| cache/blob/master/src/S...)
| withinboredom wrote:
| I tanked one by forgetting the syntax for a for-loop once. I
| hardly ever used it at the time since I mostly dealt with
| infinite iterators.
| tenderfault wrote:
| indeed, now protected sounds a bit dodgy, innit? always felt
| lost in translation with them oop lads
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| A long time ago I spent a large part of a year writing some
| woftware in Rexx [1] on an IBM 3090 mainframe. Rexx was designed
| by Mike Cowlishaw, who (like me) is British, and (from memory)
| the language included a few "Britishisms". For example it's
| keyword for selecting output text colour allowed "colour" as well
| as "color". It also used "say" to print text. Twenty year-old me
| was a little bemused.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Postgres allows "EXPLAIN ANALYSE" as well as "EXPLAIN ANALYZE".
| Lio wrote:
| BBC BASIC accepts both COLOR and COLOUR as keywords.
|
| https://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcwin/tutorial/chapter07.html
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I think DBASE III+ also used `SAY`
| fakedang wrote:
| When I read this, I could hear Rule Britannia playing at the back
| of my head.
|
| I will be right back, going to prepare some tea and biscuits...
| Cheerio!
| esskay wrote:
| The worst part of being a British developer is having to go
| through someone elses code and find they used 'colour' all over
| the damn place. Just stick to how the rest of the world accepted
| the use of 'color' instead!
| openplatypus wrote:
| Colour is just fine.
| bell-cot wrote:
| A bit of local colour shows the code to be locally-sourced
| and sustainable.
|
| (Well, with Britain's current political mess..."sustainable"
| may be stretching it.)
| hk1337 wrote:
| Seeing all the long version function names makes me think the
| British would probably prefer Pascal over C.
| account-5 wrote:
| Had myself a good old chuckle to this.
| kimburgess wrote:
| As a dual citizen living out in the colony, this looks like a
| great accompaniment to our local preferred language
| https://aussieplusplus.vercel.app/.
| ldjb wrote:
| Funnily enough, PHP actually taught me the Hebrew expression for
| "double colon", thanks to the infamous T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM.
|
| http://phpsadness.com/sad/1
| pimlottc wrote:
| Well that is certainly unexpected, is there a story behind why
| a Hebrew term was chosen for this character?
| ldjb wrote:
| Much of the PHP internals (the Zend Engine) was created by
| Israeli developers. I'm not sure why they didn't use English,
| but clearly they just used their native tongue in this case.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zend_Engine
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| If $AnyProgrammingLanguage was German, unary "not" operator would
| be postfix. if (something == null nicht) { ... }
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| in Turkish too
|
| if not something if something degilse
| rbonvall wrote:
| There was a formal proposal to adopt a German syntax for Scala:
|
| https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2017/04/01/announcing-skala....
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| That's an April Fools joke, not a formal proposal
| rbonvall wrote:
| The "formal proposal" part was my December Fools joke.
| gdprrrr wrote:
| > Some users may have angst about typing characters such as u
| and ss, but Odersky dismisses this idea: "Being completely
| unable to enter half the syntax on an English keyboard may
| make coding slower, but that never seemed to hold Scalaz
| back."
|
| Bravo Martin
| prennert wrote:
| I think it would be more beautiful that that:
| If (something nicht null ==) { }
|
| I.e. falls (etwas nicht null ist) { },
| lqet wrote:
| Why?
|
| It's obviously the == that should be postfix.
| "Falls etwas nicht null ist" if something
| not null ==
| tgv wrote:
| We all know that das Nichts nichtet (nothingness nothings;
| Heidegger), so it should be falls etwas
| nichtet
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| To reflect the spirit of negating the meaning in simple
| sentences, not to follow exact grammatical order (but that's
| also cool idea)
| danbruc wrote:
| Falls etwas nicht gleich null ist. if
| something not == null Falls etwas
| nicht ungleich null ist. if something not !=
| null
| marcosdumay wrote:
| So, just a stack-based language?
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| ``` const foo = await getFooAsync(); ```
|
| vs
|
| ``` Konst foo = auf bekommenFooAsynchron() warten; ```
| acomjean wrote:
| Perl caught me off guard with this. We apparently had a
| programmer who liked to write
|
| Statement unless x;
|
| This did not make left to write code scanning me happy.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I have fractionally more sympathy for the post-conditional
| `if` - `statement if x;` - because at least then you're not
| trying to invert things at the end of a sentence.
|
| Only fractionally because I hate all post-conditionals with a
| passion. They're the garden paths[1] of coding.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... The only thing that changes is that the exception
| comes on its negated form. It doesn't make code scanning
| any harder, or interpreting it any more convoluted.
|
| Personally, I do hate both of those (including the Python's
| ternary operator). But there is something with the bashism
| it shares, of `do_it() or die "trying"` that looks quite
| nice.
| sn41 wrote:
| Ruby has this. Can be surprising to read code ... "Wait..
| What? Oh ok."
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I like to do that in Ruby. It just reads so natural:
| $x = foo() unless $y > 10
|
| As with any language feature, you can over-use it, but in
| general once I was used to it I missed it in every other
| programming language.
| type0 wrote:
| Great article, also see https://www.citrine-lang.org it is a
| highly localized programming language
|
| I submitted it for discussion here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33829193
| neilv wrote:
| > _PHP, on the other hand, is full to bursting with abbreviations
| and acronyms which are entirely unnecessary:_
|
| Consider Scheme, where even the ubiquitous `stdout` is `current-
| output-port`.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| Shit patter
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I love this kind of humor.
|
| Do biritish people really talk that polite IRL all the time? If
| someone would always talk like that I would seem very fake and
| off to me and make me very suspicious. The only times I expressed
| myself like that was in university application letters.
|
| I wish someone would do a Scottish or Australian version of PHP
| complete with swear words. I'd pay good money for that (I have my
| Alexa set to Aussie, totally worth it).
| _joel wrote:
| Do we heck. There are many different dialect and accents in the
| UK, but nobody talks like that (Apart from the 18th Century
| cosplayer, Jacob Rees Mogg, but thankfully we hear less from
| him nowadays)
| mcv wrote:
| > Do british people really talk that polite IRL all the time?
|
| It's that or cockney. Those are literally your only options if
| you want anyone from the UK to understand you.
| te_chris wrote:
| Nope. The telegraph (right wing paper for posh people) was
| losing its mind about London street slang a few months back
| (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/13/wagwan-street-
| sl...)
| sph wrote:
| "G'day Alexa." And I imagine she calls you a cunt once in a
| while, for good measure.
| techterrier wrote:
| no.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Do biritish people really talk that polite IRL all the time?
|
| The other side of the same humor is re-writing everything with
| "oi, c*nt, over here, you c****sucker"
|
| Aaaand I think it's the same people :)
| twixfel wrote:
| Some examples he used are never said. I would say something
| like "perchance" very rarely, and "Good morrow" never. "Would
| you mind", well I suppose we say this all the time.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| However using "perchance" as "if" replacement is somewhat
| ingenious. Always be polite in your sourcecode. :D
| jrumbut wrote:
| They talk normally but the way they walk is very silly indeed:
|
| https://youtu.be/eCLp7zodUiI
| abracadabra_ wrote:
| No. We really don't.
|
| People who speak Received Pronunciation (RP) may speak more in
| this way (look up Jacob Rees-Mogg if you really want to see how
| stupid it sounds) but they are a small minority of the British
| people.
| canbus wrote:
| we definitely don't speak politely _about_ Jacob Rees-Mogg
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Hm? He's certainly the smartest and most skilled MP by far.
| A Victorian gentleman who invented a time-machine to travel
| 150 years in the future? Name one other MP who can match
| his genius.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I'm curious why you think RP sounds stupid.
| flir wrote:
| He's confusing RP with how JRM speaks. JRM has entire
| layers of silly cosplay on top of RP.
|
| Personally my go-to for RP would be Trevor McDonald.
| abracadabra_ wrote:
| I was more saying that one particular example (JRM) sounds
| stupid. I don't think this is a contentious issue.
|
| However, RP can sound a bit silly with some pronunciations.
| The same is true with any accent.
| DrBazza wrote:
| How JRM speaks doesn't bother me at all.
|
| Must be an age thing.
|
| What bothers me is the emergence over the last 10 or 15
| years is the new London accent that was previously Thames
| Estaury in the 90s and before that an actual bona fide
| London accent that my grandparents had.
|
| The new accent is typified by -ah or -ar instead of -er.
|
| The police recruitment adverts being the best example.
| Become a police office-aah instead of police office-er.
| flir wrote:
| > and before that an actual bona fide London accent that
| my grandparents had.
|
| It wasn't really, though - it was just the first one you
| heard. Accents are always in flux.
|
| (An interesting comparison for me is the Sex Pistols' car
| crash Bill Grundy interview against a modern London yoof
| accent. Major, major change just within my lifetime).
| DrBazza wrote:
| By bona fide London accent I mean that the way both sets
| of my grandparents spoke was different to each other in
| London and different again to their cousins that lived in
| Kent and Surrey. The Thames Estuary accent pretty much
| replaced the London accent and those of each of the Home
| Counties.
| flir wrote:
| Sure, I get it. I'm not trying to be nitpicky (I swear!)
| I'm just trying to point out that the Elizabethan London
| accent, the Victorian London accent, and today's London
| accent are no less bona fide.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Interestingly JRM doesn't have any blue blood at all
| despite the whole 'honourable member for the early 19th
| century' persona, public image is a fascinating thing!
| abracadabra_ wrote:
| P.S. I'm from Yorkshire so I'm used to accents being
| mocked.
| oblio wrote:
| Isn't RP basically BBC-speak and thus a lot more widespread?
| Even if it's not the native accent of a lot of people.
| foo42 wrote:
| Nah, it's a caricature of a particular class of Brit, mostly
| from a particular period. We do have different turns of phrase,
| some of which are very local even within Britain, but they're
| not all posh and polite, if anything the greater differences
| are in our styles of irreverence
| paganel wrote:
| > if anything the greater differences are in our styles of
| irreverence
|
| I'd say the self-deprecating humour is also a mainstay of the
| Brits, encompassing almost all social classes. Granted, I'm
| not a Brit, but a former boss of mine (I'd also call him a
| friend) was a Brit and he checked all the stereotypes related
| to that. Really great guy.
|
| They (the Brits) used to also be renowned for their black
| humour, at least around these parts of the European
| continent, but I feel that that is beginning to fade out
| (maybe it has become too culturally sensitive to joke about
| death? I wouldn't know)
| sph wrote:
| Relevant: Stephen Fry explains the difference between
| British and American humour: https://youtu.be/8k2AbqTBxao
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| British people also talk like this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5bqYlsXDdg
| snodnipper wrote:
| I would imagine those are a subset, where some would be
| referred to locally as "chavs"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav
|
| Folks might note 'In the 2010 book Stab Proof Scarecrows by
| Lance Manley, it was surmised that "chav" was an abbreviation
| for "council housed and violent"'.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Britain is a patchwork of different dialects and speech
| patterns with numerous class-based and regional variations. We
| don't all speak the same any more than Americans do.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > Do biritish people really talk that polite IRL all the time?
|
| No, no-one talks like that, and also "British people" don't
| really talk the same way even from one town to the next.
| There's not really any such thing as a "British accent".
|
| You know how different a New Englander talks from a Texan?
| That's how different someone from Glasgow sounds compared to
| someone from Edinburgh, or someone from Manchester compared to
| someone from Birmingham.
| happymellon wrote:
| I would say the difference between West Country, Home
| Counties, North East and Glasgow is significantly higher than
| the difference between most US States. Although that's
| presumably because we have had thousands of years to develop
| dialects and the US didn't have very long until TV, radio,
| telephone started mashing dialects from regions together.
|
| I can tell the difference between New England and Florida but
| it isn't quite in the same league.
| Lio wrote:
| Accents in the UK aren't even consistent in the same place.
| My wife and I have different accents and grew up in the
| same medium large sized town.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| Accents in the UK also have a strong class dimension.
| Middle class people often speak in a very different way
| to working class people from the same area.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| The general pattern observed in linguistics is that
| accents/dialects/languages and language families have the
| greatest level of diversity in the area where they
| originated.
|
| E.g. Austronesian is a huge language family that covers an
| enormous geographic area including Hawaii, the Philippines,
| Indonesia and even as far as Madagascar, and it contains
| over 1,000 distinct languages divided into 9 subfamilies -
| and yet all but one of those subfamilies are found
| exclusively in Taiwan, where proto-Austronesian first
| emerged roughly 5000 years ago.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Dunno if there is such a thing as "how British people talk".
|
| Something that's struck me about the country is how much the
| way you talk reflects where you are from and your station in
| life. Like not just which region, there's frequently
| dialects/sociolects for different parts of a city.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The smallest dialect areas I know of are next-town/next-city.
| I'd be interested if you could give an example (email me if
| you like, see my profile)?
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| There are said to be multiple variations of the Liverpool
| ("Scouse") accent: https://wikiless.org/wiki/Scouse?lang=en
| mrtksn wrote:
| Brits will say that they don't but if you are coming form a
| more direct culture you definitely notice the added layer of
| politeness to everything. There are a lot of other native
| speakers in the UK, for example from Australia or the USA, and
| you can instantly tell if this person is from the UK or
| Australia and it's not only the accent that gives away.
|
| Maybe you've heard that the western attitude of smiling for no
| good reason is strange for Eastern Europeans but this is not
| like that and you can actually quickly internalise the general
| politeness of daily interactions. I like it a lot but sometimes
| can come up as unauthentic, you feel the authenticity when they
| start using sarcasm.
| toyg wrote:
| _f you are coming form a more direct culture you definitely
| notice the added layer of politeness to everything_
|
| Brits will kill me for this, but it's more of an European
| thing - the Brits just preserved it a bit more aggressively
| than others, because they never actually abolished the
| aristocratic system that generated it.
| notahacker wrote:
| Tbh a lot of the aristocratic address stuff that's still
| present in other languages is long gone from British
| English, except for people employed as butlers and people
| sarcastically mimicking the forms of address used by
| butlers. Even Americans are more likely to address people
| as "Sir" than Britons under pensionable age, and English
| hasn't had the polite second person pronoun most languages
| do for a long time, never mind involving a dilemma over
| whether to use a construction that would literally
| translate as "would your grace..." in everyday interactions
| to avoid people getting upset by the overfamiliarity of
| "you"!
|
| We do love deliberate understatement, evasion and saying
| please a lot though!
| ogogmad wrote:
| British English has a very flat hierarchy, with no T/V
| distinction as found in French or Russian, and very little
| use of honorifics or titles (even for authority figures
| like university professors).
|
| British politeness is not based on hierarchy, but based on
| (sometimes excessive) apologising for inconvenience.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> it's more of an European thing_
|
| Not true. Go to Eastern Europe and see. You'll get much
| less unintentional smiles or politeness than in the UK.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Not true. Go to Eastern Europe and see._
|
| Oh oh, "yes true", and your note confirms it... What did
| Eastern Europe aggressively do, in the last century?
| _Destroy aristocracy_. So they are at the opposite end of
| that particular scale.
| oblio wrote:
| > What did Eastern Europe aggressively do, in the last
| century? Destroy aristocracy.
|
| Well, I wasn't a big fan of it, but the reality of the
| matter is... for most of us, someone else destroyed our
| aristocracy (and all of our intelligentsia with it) for
| us.
| DaveChild wrote:
| No, it's a joke.
|
| Source: I wrote it :)
| [deleted]
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That heading gave me a great idea for the PHP language
| maintainers/devs: Make your language support keywords depending
| on the locale of the system the interpreter/compiler runs on!
| Users will love this "feature"!
|
| (I hope no one in their right mind takes this idea serious.)
| danbruc wrote:
| Excel. At least kind of.
| ht85 wrote:
| US: SUM(...) FR: BAGUETTE(...)
| Joker_vD wrote:
| RU: SUMM(...)
|
| For additional fun, the cell names still use Latin letters
| so you have to constantly switch your keyboard layout from
| Latin to Cyrillic to Latin back to Cyrillic back to... or
| pick the cells and ranges with your mouse.
|
| Golly, I wonder why they didn't reuse this approach when
| they translated Excel to Japanese and Chinese.
| [deleted]
| KurvaKing wrote:
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the main thing that needs to be included is a deliberate
| sense of vagueness and uncertainty around even the most basic
| propositions.
|
| Instead of true or false or 1 or 0 values and = operators,
| British PHP should have constructions like "might very well be",
| "perhaps" and "not too sure about that"
|
| Also needs a very advanced queuing system
| sph wrote:
| With `perhaps` being a quantum superposition of 1 and 0, that
| collapses into a single value when used.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| That's already been adopted in Python with its "Truthy" or
| "Falsy" values!
| squeegee_scream wrote:
| I've gotta mention If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, an excellently
| funny book, relevant to the thread.
| https://anguscroll.com/hemingway/
| gdprrrr wrote:
| In a similar vein: Mark Rendle - The Worst Programming Language
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcFBwt1nu2U
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Text speak" is unheard of on the streets of London, as the
| natural ingrained British grammarian simply refuses to stoop to
| sending messages of the "c u soon traffic kthxbye" variety
|
| Come on now, the streets of London are full of nonsense like
| this: For example, the word "Aris" is often used to indicate the
| buttocks. This is the result of a double rhyme, starting with the
| original rough synonym "arse", which is rhymed with "bottle and
| glass", leading to "bottle". "Bottle" was then rhymed with
| "Aristotle" and truncated to "Aris"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang
| beardyw wrote:
| A rhyming slang version of PHP would balance things out. A new
| project for someone.
| swores wrote:
| I fear you may have fallen into a trap of reading those words
| without the humour they were intended to convey.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I get the joke and made my own
| [deleted]
| swores wrote:
| We may have different definitions of the word "joke" :P
| solumunus wrote:
| Jesus christ.
| toyg wrote:
| Only the unwashed or criminal element will ever use rhyming
| slang - the whole point of its existence is obfuscation from
| police eavesdropping. I'll have you know, dear sir, that no
| respected member of the middle or upper classes should ever be
| found employing such bastardised lingo. The glorious Empire has
| no use for such trickery.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > Only the unwashed or criminal element
|
| We're talking about PHP here, so yes.
| rkachowski wrote:
| Sir, I am confounded that you would seek to equate the noble
| vernacular present betwixt the fine men of industry in Our
| Great City, with that of the filthy street patois which serves
| only to tarnish the fine polish of gentlemanly character.
| t43562 wrote:
| It's more like this: blah = dosomeaction()
| bla > 0 innit? # Assertion
|
| ..... if read(blah) { return
| RES_NOT_TOO_BAD; # Everything's great }
|
| .... if !read(blah) { go Titsup("sorry
| mate, no such luck!") # exceptions }
| line(0,0,100,100, colour=GREY); # It's $##$%^ "COLOUR" damnit!!!!
| and G-R-E-Y!!!!
|
| etc
| dylan604 wrote:
| "Shakespeare would be ashamed"
|
| To be proper shakespearen, would
|
| perchance() {} otherwise {}
|
| not be
|
| to be() {} or not to be {}
| ht85 wrote:
| be() || !be()
| sgjohnson wrote:
| this would just run be() twice, if !be()
| ht85 wrote:
| !be() <-> be() + be()?
|
| I'm bad a philosophical math
| dylan604 wrote:
| but is that valid PHP?
| hoosieree wrote:
| True.
| zsiec wrote:
| that is the question
| tambourine_man wrote:
| perchance (PScondition) { // Code here }
| otherwise
|
| I actually LOL, well done sir.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| We could have a "use slang"; directive sort of like JS strict
| mode. When you declare a variable in this mode, it must be
| suffixed with "innit" like so;
|
| >$my_variable = 5 innit;
| s_dev wrote:
| If a scripting language was to be from Cork, Ireland:
| https://adam-lynch.github.io/ked/
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I am definitely implementing would_you_mind/actually_i_do_mind
| structures.
| adzm wrote:
| Most of this could be implemented with the C preprocessor.
| Splendid.
| markx2 wrote:
| No-one has yet mentioned nonce.
|
| Here in the UK, a nonce is "a slang term for a sex offender,
| especially one convicted of sexual offences against children."
| cyann wrote:
| Thank you! I've heard that on a episode of Avenue 5 and it was
| confusing
| Beltalowda wrote:
| "Release the pedophile!"
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Indeed, in the British version of PHP we shall use
| "princeandrew" instead.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Especially entertaining when it appears in WordPress plugin
| error messages. Last year I had to calm down a gentleman who
| was receiving errors when trying to post a comment which said
| something like "Illegal nonce detected" - he was quite
| distraught and thought someone was falsely accusing him of
| child molestation!
| commitpizza wrote:
| I can only wish the author of this article a good afternoon.
|
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj9VljRQzCQ)
| DaveChild wrote:
| It's morning here, but thankyou all the same.
| tenderfault wrote:
| actually "hereditary" is more sound than "protected", innit? to
| some extent
| idoubtit wrote:
| It missed another category of USA-centrics behaviour that infused
| in PHP: the dates. For instance, `mktime(hour, minute, second,
| month, day, year)`. I've never seen a country outside of North-
| America that puts the month first, though my experience is
| limited to a few dozens of countries across the world.
|
| Unfortunately, other programming languages also think the USA
| format is the standard. Formatting dates with Golang relies on
| using the USA ordering. The more I use it, the more I despise it.
| I'm from Europe, but I'm so used to ISO dates that I need a small
| adjustment time to read European formatted dates.
| alistairSH wrote:
| My extended family is in Scotland while I'm naturalized here in
| the US.
|
| Our wedding "save the date" notices caused a bit of confusion -
| they were published with 6/3/06 (Jun 6) and sent in Feb. From
| my uncles: "we'd love to come, but that's a bit short
| notice..." Oops. The formal invites had the dates spelled out.
| chasil wrote:
| At the start of my career after graduation, I needed to assume
| the role of a DNS administrator for Berkeley BIND running on
| SCO OpenServer.
|
| I was encouraged by my ISP to use 20050101 (YYYYMMDD) as part
| of the zone serial number.
|
| I have used that format ever since, especially because it will
| sort correctly without any special handling.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Americans have asked me why I write "2/12/2022" or "2 December"
| when "it's not pronounced that way".
|
| Well, I pronounce it [the] 2nd of December. Just like they say
| "4th July!", but only for that single day.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| It's ironic that Americans pronounce their independence day
| in British format.
| jagthebeetle wrote:
| Actually, Americans wouldn't say "fourth July" - that would
| likely connote "the fourth iteration of July" in some longer
| timespan (e.g. "In the fourth July of my adolescence").
|
| "Fourth _of_ July" (or "July fourth") are the Americanisms
| here.
| civopsec wrote:
| Given that they wrote "2nd of December" that was probably
| just a blunder.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I would suggest it's completely intentional to pronounce
| "Fourth of July" differently to distinguish it from every
| other day.
| civopsec wrote:
| > I'm from Europe, but I'm so used to ISO dates that I need a
| small adjustment time to read European formatted dates.
|
| There is no "European format". At least one country's date
| format (in E) coincides with the simple ISO-8601 format.
| joshvm wrote:
| I learned to code seriously using PHP so I have some fondness for
| it, and I believe it's been much improved since back then. But
| the "Fractal of bad design" post (from 2012 no less, so a year
| after this one) never fails to amuse:
|
| https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
| azalemeth wrote:
| While this is obviously a (good) joke, the differences between
| cultures often become unexpectedly important in code.
|
| I remember being about 13 and learning about OO code and reading
| Apple's (then excellent) developer documentation. It had an
| example of a class called "faucet" and lots of text related to
| American plumbing. At the time I had literally no idea what
| faucet meant (en_gb: tap) and spent about five times longer
| trying to understand the metaphor than the actual code. It really
| left a bitter taste in my mouth: I didn't have a clue what was
| going on, not because of inheritance or Obj-C, but entirely
| because I didn't understand what the author probably didn't
| realise was a culturally sorry metaphor.
| annadar wrote:
| "culturally sorry metaphor" just because you cant understand
| doesnt make it "culturally sorry".
| mihaaly wrote:
| It is silly, but even small things like foo and bar could be a
| barrier or distraction at least. At least I am thinking more
| about 'Why the heck foo and bar? Why?! Why not A or B or other
| more neutral and common? What could be the hidden meaning?...'
| than about the logic of the example.
| emsixteen wrote:
| I really dislike when people use foo and bar. Use something
| with _some_ meaning imo.
| kqr wrote:
| Yup. The point of an example is to let the learner leverage
| their intuition about one concept to guide their
| understanding of the other. It requires realistic examples.
| Nobody has useful intuition around what a "foo" is. It
| contradicts the very point of an example.
|
| (It is useful to illustrate syntax, though!)
| marssaxman wrote:
| That's the point, though; you use 'foo' and 'bar' when you
| want the reader to focus on an abstraction, instead of
| potentially distracting them with the details of a concrete
| situation.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| For example - sometimes people get confused about what is
| meant by a "faucet," and so using "faucet" as a variable
| name could lead to confusion.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Evidently the abstraction can also be the distraction.
| civopsec wrote:
| I think of a crowbar and martial arts. Ugh, it's actually
| much more distracting than the serene A-B-C, X-Y-C, and
| so on.
| jameshart wrote:
| Once the 'programming bit' is flipped in someone's brain,
| I think metasyntactic variables like foo and bar become
| very instinctive and easy to reason about. You have
| activated the part of your brain that visualizes things
| as abstractions with placeholders.
|
| The problem is when foo and bar are used in material
| aimed at _beginning_ programmers who are still developing
| that instinct and who haven't yet got that bit set.
| bitwize wrote:
| "Foo" and "bar" are hacker culture signifiers, like "yo"
| and "word up" are hip-hop culture signifiers. Even if you
| don't consider yourself a part of hacker culture,
| understanding its history and peculiar lingo is probably a
| good idea if you contribute to a site known as "Hacker
| News".
|
| The Jargon File, though largely historical and obsolete, is
| a good place to start:
|
| https://catb.org/esr/jargon/
| chasil wrote:
| Oh, it very much has meaning.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUBAR_(disambiguation)
| mh-cx wrote:
| Sorry to be nitpicking:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
|
| "Foobar
|
| Not to be confused with FUBAR or Foobar2000."
|
| It's linked from FUBAR but not under "disambiguation" but
| "See also".
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Well, yeah. But also:
|
| > It is possible that foobar is a playful allusion to the
| World War II-era military slang FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond
| All Recognition).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
|
| Which is certainly how I've always understood it.
| FredPret wrote:
| It comes from fubar, which stands for "fucked up beyond all
| recognition". Foo and bar it seem so innocent and whimsical
| by comparison
| bitwize wrote:
| "Foo" dates earlier:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33747944
|
| https://catb.org/jargon/html/F/foo.html
|
| It was probably paired with "bar" because of FUBAR though.
|
| My dad referred to the figure known as the "impossible
| trident" (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trident ) as a
| "foobar". It was used as a warning to engineering students
| to check their technical drawings.
| [deleted]
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I'm not a native English speaker, but when I was explaining
| some basic programming to my English ex-girlfriend I mentioned
| "parenthesis" at some point, and she had no idea what they
| were. Turns out, they're "brackets" in British English; I
| didn't even know parenthesis is American English.
|
| Even though I typically use British spelling and idioms I still
| prefer and use parenthesis because it's just clearer and less
| easily confused with square brackets.
|
| She also kept typing "colour" and such in CSS. Since then I've
| always made sure "color" and "colour" both work whenever I add
| a setting of CLI for it. I wish the English-speaking folk could
| agree on a way to spell things; can you all maybe have a war
| over it or sort it out some other way?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| We have 3 different sets of things on keyboards (well,
| us/western ones, anyway)...
|
| () {} and []
|
| Typically I've seen/read [] as 'brackets', () as
| 'parenthesis' and {} as 'curly brackets' or 'curly braces'.
|
| So would UK folks use () as 'brackets' and [] as 'square
| brackets'?
| felixhandte wrote:
| There's also <>, which I (en-US) call "angle brackets".
| timthorn wrote:
| > So would UK folks use () as 'brackets' and [] as 'square
| brackets'?
|
| Yes, exactly that.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > So would UK folks use () as 'brackets' and [] as 'square
| brackets'?
|
| Yes; "round brackets" is also used, but typically just
| "brackets".
|
| It's one of those words that exists in both variants of
| English but actually mean something different. "Pepper",
| "pants", "fanny" are also fun.
| tarsinge wrote:
| I'm French and the similitude of a lot of words in British is
| problematic, because I'm never sure I'm not inventing words.
| Colour for example sounds like a misspell of "couleur" for
| me, whereas color feels more English. But maybe it's just
| because I consume a lot more American media than British.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| And then there's French Canadian and French French. I find
| it weird how a lot of English native speakers see them as 2
| different languages, as if they were more different than
| the Texas and London English dialects. hint : nobody's
| gonna call you a muppet in Texas.
| elenaferrantes wrote:
| Seems there are some words seen as high level that a French
| would immediately recognise whereas the relaxed counterpart
| make no sense for him. Example : "facilitate". I'm French,
| this word sounds like horrible "franglais" for me but may
| look classy for an English (?).
| rightbyte wrote:
| > can you all maybe have a war over it or sort it out some
| other way?
|
| The confusion stems mainly from the Norman conquest anyway so
| don't count on a war solving it.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Oh you think that was bad? When I was that age my teachers were
| flagging to my parents that I kept switching between American
| and British spellings at random. Doing lots of programming in
| US English was causing my schoolwork to be frequently marked
| wrong (the teachers were fortunately quite forgiving about this
| type of mistake). It was just hard at that age to remember
| which of "color" and "colour" were correct in different
| contexts and ditto for a bunch of other words. Also for a brief
| period I thought the right way to write a zero was with a
| strikethrough because of the monospace fonts.
|
| Other fun US/UK cultural issues: interview questions like "how
| many pingpong balls fit in a school bus". To Brits a school bus
| could be literally anything from a coach to a small vehicle,
| they aren't standardized like in the US. Even when you remember
| the big yellow buses from films, how big are they? If you never
| saw one in real life it's hard to imagine. Also it took a while
| before I figured out that "ping pong" meant table tennis. Fun
| times.
| TylerE wrote:
| Busses aren't standardized here, either. I've certainlu seen
| vans used in rural areas.
| omginternets wrote:
| Here's a fun story. I left academia right after my Ph.D and
| moved to London, where I started freelancing as a software
| developer. Naturally, I joined a coworking space, since I was
| new in town and wanted to meet people. This coworking space
| had a weekly social event where new members were introduced
| over drinks, and I was promptly asked to go on stage and
| introduce myself and say a few words about my professional
| background.
|
| I hopped on stage and started talking about my Ph.D in
| cognitive neuroscience. I told them that I was studying how
| the attentional system is involved in conscious perception.
| To make it a bit more tangible, I asked everybody to close
| their eyes, and said "I've now been talking to you for a few
| minutes. With your eyes closed, I want you to tell me what
| color pants I'm wearing."
|
| If you're British, you're likely roaring with laughter at
| this point. For the Americans: _pants_ means underwear in the
| Queen 's English.
|
| We all had a jolly good laugh.
| azalemeth wrote:
| When a graduate student, I once shoved a sample into a -80
| oC freezer with a template on the front showing what
| everything was, written in pencil as an index (everything
| was stored in a metal rack in a particular position and
| they all looked identical from the top - it was a bit of a
| pain to find your sample if you didn't know where to look
| as you'd have to lift them all out and rummage). Someone
| had removed something and not removed its name from the
| index on the door, and I'd placed my sample in its place,
| let's say into spot H6.
|
| I went around the corner and popped my head into the
| nearest office - a female (and conventionally attractive)
| American post-doc I didn't know terribly well was sitting
| there typing and I just said, "Hey, <name> do you have a
| rubber I could borrow in a hurry for just a moment? I'll
| bring it back in less than two minutes, promise!". She
| changed colour, burst out laughing, and handed me "an
| eraser"...
| omginternets wrote:
| Oh man, that's a very unfortunate choice of words :'D
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I still write a zero with a line through - I think it makes
| it very clear (with my terrible handwriting) that it is
| indeed a number!
| embedded_hiker wrote:
| In high school, circa 1980, there were a few of us who were
| into computers. In math class, one of us thought it would
| be cool to write zeros with slashes through them, because
| that is how our computers printed them. He got marked down
| on his homework because a zero with a slash through it
| meant the empty set. Context matters I suppose. I think
| there are enough clues in this comment that this was in the
| US, not the UK.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Table tennis is the name of the sport. Ping-pong is a brand
| of table tennis equipment.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Huh really. This is like with Hoover then, where the term
| became generic? I only ever heard ping-pong used as the
| name of the sport.
|
| Another thing that confused me and lots of other British
| children: why do so many American program brand names begin
| with the apparently meaningless letters EZ? Eee-zed doesn't
| mean anything!
| stragies wrote:
| 'EZ' is meant to be read as 'Easy', I think.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Yep. It's embarrassing how long it took a teenage me to
| figure that one out, though.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| I believe the confusion is over the letter Z.
| Commonwealth countries would pronounce that "zed" while
| in America that letter is pronounced "zee" (rhyming with
| letters like B, C, D, etc.).
|
| EZ would be pronounced "easy".
| jotm wrote:
| Hoover (vacuum), Xerox (copy), Flex (angle grinder), the
| bright yellow post it note (3m trademark), pretty funny
| stuff
| bombcar wrote:
| And then there's things like _million_ and _billion_ being
| literal magnitudes different.
|
| "England and America are two countries separated by a common
| language."
| Symbiote wrote:
| The long scale (million, milliard, billion, billiard) has
| been obsolete both officially and unofficially in Britain
| for decades.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Which is tragic, because it's more correct
| mathematically.
|
| I'm American, and I grew up with the short scale, so I
| always though it made obvious sense: every time you add a
| comma, you jump up. So 1,000,000 is a million,
| 1,000,000,000 is a billion.
|
| But 10^9 is a billion and 10^12 is a trillion makes very
| little sense. I mean, I know it's 1,000 * 1,000^2 and
| 1,000 * 1,000^3, but it seems to make more sense to me to
| say that a million million is a billion, and a million
| million million is a trillion. So 1,000,000^2 and
| 1,000,000^3, with the bi and tri right there.
|
| Still, that ship has long sailed, so 1,000 * 1,000^3 for
| a trillion it is.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I've been thinking we can un-sail that ship by getting
| explicit about which scale (when it's relevant).
|
| Always "million", but any time you say "billion" say
| "long billion" or "short billion". If it catches on,
| after a sufficient period we can drop the "long" once
| everyone realizes that long is better (and gives us
| milliards and billiards).
| bombcar wrote:
| So has the English system of measurements in the US :(
| eythian wrote:
| My early programming was on BBC Micro and some Acorn machines
| in school. There, the programming and documentation was all
| spelt correctly, from memory. "colour", "dialogue",
| "catalogue", and so on. It wasn't until I started on a PC
| that I got the Americanisation of computer stuff.
|
| To this day, I still name things internally with the
| spellings I'm used to despite working in an international
| company (where it makes sense of course, not in a way that
| might lead to actual time wasted due to confusion.)
| [deleted]
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I wondered why you didn't just google the meaning of the word
| like I would've done at that age, but then remembered that this
| was not a thing back in the days.
|
| Also reminds me of when I was stuck in Lego Star Wars and
| couldn't find the way to solve a level. I then searched for a
| write-up of said level. At that point I only understood German,
| but I was still extremely confused by the write-up. The reason
| was, that the German word for 'hatch' is 'Luke', and Luke
| Skywalker was a character who was present in that level. I was
| stuck because I didn't find that hatch and the write-up told me
| that I 'jump on the platform with Luke and activate a control
| panel with R2-D2 to make Luke appear so that people can go
| through the Luke' (very paraphrased, but I think the point
| comes across)
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Just pop in the Encarta CD and search
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I'm too young to understand that reference :D My first OS
| was Windows XP and googling things was already pretty well
| established. Didn't know that Microsoft used to publish an
| encyclopedia, interesting!
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Ooof, well I'll go lie down for a bit I guess :)
|
| Edit: The best windows OS after 95 ;)
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I'm tired as well so I understand ;)
|
| Windows XP was nice, yeah. Windows 7 as well, and I can
| tolerate Windows 10 for gaming. For everything else, the
| penguin does the job.
| [deleted]
| ciconia wrote:
| I live in France. When trying to teach my kids some Ruby, I
| showed them how to use _puts_ to print stuff. That would always
| crack them up, as it sounds (in French pronunciation) just like
| a not so nice word.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| In Quebec, it sounds mostly like the sound of a car horn :p
|
| "POUT! POUT!"
|
| C'est surtout utilise dans le jingle d'une rotisseries tres
| populaire : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvzukGgd5_Y
| ketralnis wrote:
| This is a commonly cited problem with using IQ tests outside of
| their specifically applicable cases. They tend to assume a
| common world and then ask you questions about navigating that
| world, but not everybody lives in that world to start with.
| hajile wrote:
| The etymology of faucet and tap is interesting (from Oxford
| online dictionary):
|
| > late Middle English (denoting a bung for the vent hole of a
| cask, or a tap for drawing liquor from a container): from Old
| French fausset, from Provencal falset, from falsar 'to bore'.
| The current sense dates from the mid 19th cent.
|
| > Old English taeppa 'peg for the vent-hole of a cask',
| taeppian 'provide (a cask) with a stopper', of Germanic origin;
| related to Dutch tap and German, Zapfen (nouns).
|
| Both had the same classical meaning from different origins, but
| the British chose the German/Dutch word while the Americans
| chose the French/Latin word.
| meepmorp wrote:
| According to the OED, the use of faucet as a tap for drawing
| liquid out of something dates is attested as far back as
| 1400s - I'd consider that current sense (as does the OED).
| memsom wrote:
| I don't thing British "chose" a German/Dutch word, it was the
| native choice. We speak a Germanic language, though it has
| been quite influenced by French and Latin loan words. Faucet
| sounds like a much "posher" word to me, native British
| English speaker.
|
| I think this is a common theme. British English has earthier
| words, American English seems to have fancier terms in a lot
| of cases - but sometimes it is reverse. Pot luck really,
| though I think AmE is the fancier one for general terms. The
| one that always sticks in my mind is the AmE "transmission",
| which is in BE, "gearbox". I wouldn't know what
| "transmission" means if someone hadn't told me, but I could
| have worked out what gearbox was from the fact it was talking
| about gears.
| pokeymcsnatch wrote:
| Hm. As an American, there's several gearboxes on my car but
| only one of them is the transmission.
| hajile wrote:
| Further, "transmission" refers to the thing sending power
| over the driveshaft. The RPM and torque are actually
| rather analogous to the frequency and amplitude of a
| radio wave rotating around a polar graph.
| kemiller wrote:
| There actually was a movement in British literature to
| favor Anglo-Saxon words that took hold after the American
| revolution.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > Both had the same classical meaning from different origins,
| but the British chose the German/Dutch word while the
| Americans chose the French/Latin word.
|
| One of the most interesting books that I've read in a long
| time:
|
| Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme--
| And Other Oddities of the English Language [0]
|
| This gave me incredible insight into the formation of modern
| English. I read it voraciously. Very good book to understand
| why it's such a mess.
|
| I bought it after hearing an interview with the author on a
| podcast.[1] I think anyone (English-speaking) who enjoys and
| appreciates language (and podcasts) will get a kick out of
| it. The author is passionate and excited by the topic, so
| very entertaining.
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55332395-highly-
| irreg... [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/corpse-
| corps-horse-an...
| jstarfish wrote:
| At least OP didn't have to navigate disambiguating
| "gloryhole."
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| I had a similar problem as a non-native English speaking
| teenager trying to learn how to code for the first time. The
| function in one of the challenges named sleepin(day, vacation)
| had to return true if the day was a Saturday and and vacation
| was true. I had no idea what that idiom meant and I think that
| significantly contributed to my struggle to learn coding as a
| beginner.
| [deleted]
| joe__f wrote:
| I remember there was a level called something like 'Open the
| Faucet' in WarioLand 2, and I was similarly confused
| DaveChild wrote:
| It's funny, I wrote it very much tongue-in-cheek of course, but
| as someone who grew up writing HTML and then CSS and using
| "color" all the time there's probably a little nugget of
| genuine pent-up irritation hidden in there somewhere.
| bombcar wrote:
| The footnote for #1 is broken.
| zhte415 wrote:
| # isn't a pound sign, PS is a pound sign.
| DaveChild wrote:
| I see you've played poundy, spoony before.
| DaveChild wrote:
| Thank, fixed.
| benbristow wrote:
| https://github.com/muan/spiffing
| cameronh90 wrote:
| It took me ages to realise that "sandbox" meant sandpit. I
| didn't really think about the word, but I never made the link.
| aequitas wrote:
| When I was a kid I thought the Pascal language was a German
| programming language and Basic was English. This was because when
| I started with computers I got a book from my uncle about
| programming serial and parallel ports. The book was in Dutch but
| the Pascal code examples where commented in German and the Basic
| ones in English. And because all language keywords where just as
| foreign to me they might as well have been German in my mind. So
| I stuck with the Basic examples, which where "English", because
| at least I had English lessons in school. Eventually I learned
| both languages where English and stuck with the Pascal examples
| because they where the more useful ones, and I learned a bit more
| German along the way to decipher the comments.
| superluserdo wrote:
| I was a bit disappointed to see that this article mostly fell
| back on the trope of British English being extremely verbose and
| indirect. I think a much more interesting counterfactual would
| be, If PHP Were _Anglish_.
|
| "Anglish" is the name given to a kind of hobbyist-led reimagining
| of English that is as close as possible to modern English, but in
| a parallel universe where the 1066 invasion of England wasn't
| successful, and English didn't adopt a huge number of French
| words. https://wiki.anglish.info/wiki/Main_Leaf
|
| Here are some English words used in computing that are derived
| from French, and their Anglish equivalents:
|
| Binary | Twile
|
| Clone | Betwin
|
| Command | Bid, behest
|
| Concurrent | Bytimely
|
| Computer | Reckoner, arimer (from "rime" meaning "number")
|
| Engine | Gearwork
|
| Event | Happening
|
| Multiprocessing | Manyworking
|
| Polymorphism | Manishapliness
|
| There are also quite a few words that are already Germanic with
| no French influence:
|
| Backup, bandwidth, bit, bookmark, boot(strap), broadband,
| browser, bug, cookie, download, flash, framework, inbox,
| keyboard, laptop, mainframe, motherboard, online, output, root,
| runtime, shell, software, thread, web, wireless.
| anthk wrote:
| - Band
|
| - Mark
|
| - Line
| flumpcakes wrote:
| This is super interesting. As a native speaker I usually don't
| ponder on loan words / influences too much, but it is very
| thought provoking to see these "Anglish" alternatives.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to learn other Germanic languages such
| as Swedish if we had not loaned so many words from French?
| shockeychap wrote:
| I don't know why, but this one made me chuckle:
|
| would_you_mind { // Code here } actually_i_do_mind (Exception
| PSe) { // Politely move on cheerio('Message'); }
| la-ruby wrote:
| The would_you_mind {} actually_i_do_mind {} block cracked me up!
| grishka wrote:
| Also setcookie() and $_COOKIE need to be renamed to setbiscuit()
| and PS_BISCUIT.
| nly wrote:
| Just in case Americans are confused as to how us Brits
| distinguish
|
| Definitely biscuits: https://www.abelandcole.co.uk/chocolate-
| chip-digestives-mr-o...
|
| Obviously cookies: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-
| GB/products/258025719
|
| I hope things are clear now.
|
| Now if someone could explain to me how a shit savoruy scone is
| a "biscuit" on your side of the pond... I'd appreciate it
| _joel wrote:
| Don't get anybody started on the tax status of Jaffa cakes
| mnw21cam wrote:
| (Sorry)
| grishka wrote:
| The system lords are gonna get really pissed if someone
| starts making cakes out of their jaffa.
| Veen wrote:
| Are those American biscuits like scones? I thought they were
| akin to dumplings. We really are "two countries separated by
| a common language".
|
| (To be clear, these dumplings:
|
| https://www.errenskitchen.com/suet-dumplings/
|
| Not these dumplings:
|
| https://omnivorescookbook.com/recipes/how-to-make-chinese-
| du... )
| OJFord wrote:
| I believe they're essentially scones (though no sugar which
| I suppose is optional in a scone) but eaten like dumplings.
|
| Dumplings are of course far superior. (And clotted cream &
| jam is a better way to eat a scone.)
| mattl wrote:
| Or the madness that is jam & then clotted cream...
| OJFord wrote:
| That really does just objectively make less sense, I
| don't understand that debate - you don't try and apply
| butter to your sandwich _after_ layering cheese and
| tomato or whatever, you spread the more solid thing
| first.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Cornwall has to cling to it, because otherwise all they
| have is cornish pasties and incest
| zeristor wrote:
| Perhaps there is a culinary 3D printer than can print in
| 3D, jam and clotted cream.
| mattl wrote:
| Yep. I don't get it, and I'm sure the Cornish apologists
| will be here shortly to explain why it makes sense.
| drcongo wrote:
| This is exactly why we should all support Cornish
| devolution.
| Veen wrote:
| I live in Devon, so I'm compelled to agree. Cream goes
| first, no matter what the Cornish have to say on the
| matter. Although, apparently the late Queen preferred the
| Cornish method.
| vmlinuz wrote:
| And why exactly should we listen to a German when it
| comes to these things?
| OJFord wrote:
| I'm sure you only mean to be anti-royalist^, but the
| implication for the rest of the citizens by birth of this
| fairly multicultural country is extremely intolerant if
| not racist.
|
| ^Understanding that just makes it a baseless & lazy
| argument, a joke at best.
| alt227 wrote:
| Jam spreads thinly and is less viscous, so is much more
| suited to a thinly spread layer across the surface.
|
| Clotted cream is far thicker and lends itself to a big
| dollop on top which keeps its shape and does not run off
| the sides.
|
| Why do people still question this obviously infallible
| logic?
| drcongo wrote:
| Sir, if you're spreading your jam thinly then you are
| doing scones wrong.
| stcroixx wrote:
| I make biscuits and scones regularly and yes, it's the same
| recipe minus sugar, which is similar to the suet dumplings
| recipe here EXCEPT you would not boil/poach a biscuit -
| that would make it a dumpling. I'd say it's more the method
| of cooking that defines a dumpling than the dough recipe -
| you could use biscuit dough but it doesn't have to be and
| often isn't.
| mjul wrote:
| How to pronounce scone is another divisive topic in itself.
|
| Does it rhyme with gone or cone?
|
| Linguists at Cambridge University have published a map of
| the regional variations:
|
| https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/cambridge-app-maps-
| decli...
| Lio wrote:
| I've always pronounced scone as scone myself but my wife
| insists on saying scone as scone. Madness.
| zeristor wrote:
| "Home to Scone" to paraphrase Shakespeare's Mark Anthony.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I've never in my life heard someone say "Backend" instead
| of "Autumn"
| egeozcan wrote:
| Languages are fun. In Turkish,
|
| Biskuvi (Biscuit): https://www.akakce.com/biskuvi/en-ucuz-
| ulker-potibor-800-gr-...
|
| In German,
|
| Kekse: https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/4
| 360170...
|
| Again in Turkish,
|
| Kek: https://www.akakce.com/kek/en-ucuz-balocco-
| panettone-500-gr-...
|
| But if it's a wet cake, then, "Pasta":
| https://www.carrefoursa.com/pastalar/c/1289
|
| What you consider to be pasta is "makarna":
| https://www.carrefoursa.com/pastalar/c/1289
|
| So, makarna/Macaroni is normally considered to be a sort of
| pasta, but in French there is,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaron
|
| I love this madness :)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| In UK we have French macarons, but also macaroons ... which
| are one of two distinct types of biscuit, both with the
| same name -- one made of almond and one made of coconut,
| although the latter is more like a flat cake.
| djbusby wrote:
| Those both in USA too, same spelling.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| There are also Scottish macaroons, which are covered in
| chocolate and desiccated coconut: https://duckduckgo.com/
| ?q=scottish+macaroons&t=h_&iax=images...
| daanlo wrote:
| Fun fact(1): The German word Kekse is a Germanization of
| the term "cakes". Although a biscuit isn't exactly a cake
| :)
|
| (1) - At least I think it's funny :)
| rhplus wrote:
| The term "cookie" literally means "little cake" from the
| Dutch "koekje". The term "biscuit" comes from the French
| for "twice cooked (cake)".
| mnw21cam wrote:
| > ... a biscuit isn't exactly a cake...
|
| Certainly not. By law. Biscuits are luxury goods, and as
| such are taxed appropriately, whereas cakes are essential
| food items, and have a lower tax rate. This culminated in
| a VAT tribunal in 1991 [0] where the makers of Jaffa
| Cakes argued that said items were cakes not biscuits, in
| order to get the lower tax rate. One of the winning
| arguments was that cakes go stale, while biscuits go
| soft. I think this could count as precedent for a proper
| legal definition of the difference between cakes and
| biscuits. (Of course, American-style cookies aren't
| biscuits either by this definition.)
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Legal_status
| folkrav wrote:
| We (French speakers) call macaroni macaroni though.
| Although there is also the term "coudes", meaning "elbows".
| egeozcan wrote:
| Aha! Well, I got fooled by Wikipedia, which links to the
| French page "macaron" from the English Macaron page as
| its translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaron
|
| After I did follow the link, I saw my mistake :)
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| German also has Biskuit, but it's used for a kind of dough
| used to make cake sponges.
| heurisko wrote:
| Biscuit - "twice baked" in French.
| oblio wrote:
| This is one of those facepalm moments :-))
| periheli0n wrote:
| That would then be ,,Zwieback" in German, which refers to
| a kind of crispy mildly sweet bread that children get fed
| when they are ill :)
| maxnoe wrote:
| Or Doppelback, a break type
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| There's not just macarons but also macaroons which are a
| completely different type of cookie/biscuit.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Random observation: Tesco's website reminds me so much of
| Costco brand and feel that I had to check if one owned the
| other.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think it _is_ pretty clear - cookies are a doughier cake-
| like (but not risen) mixture containing egg, biscuits are
| just flour /sugar/butter.
| gertrunde wrote:
| For me, the best description I've been given comes down to
| the way that they are baked:
|
| Cookies - Starts from a ball or blob, which spreads into a
| flattened shape during baking.
|
| Biscuits - Starts from a shape cut from a flat rolled sheet,
| that mostly retains its shape during cooking.
| pronik wrote:
| Which would make biscuits "Platzchen" in German.
| oblio wrote:
| I guess you're being sarcastic?
|
| Based on the pictures, those look more or less the same to
| me...
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Very different, to the degree that if you were offered one
| and given the other you'd be confuse (but of course, you
| wouldn't vocalise it).
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| It's definitely sarcasm :) Most Brits would likely identify
| the first link as "cookies" too (based on their appearance
| at least)
| emsixteen wrote:
| No, they're very different, but I agree that the pictures
| look alike.
| totalZero wrote:
| > Now if someone could explain to me how a shit savoruy scone
| is a "biscuit" on your side of the pond
|
| It may be because "scones and gravy" sounds like it would
| taste, well...British.
| pavlov wrote:
| The imperative mood of "set" feels impolite though.
|
| Maybe something like wont_you_have_a_biscuit_please()?
| npteljes wrote:
| Yeah, offer_biscuit() seems appropriate.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Makes sense in the GDPR context.
| pavlov wrote:
| Post-Brexit, GDPR is a dirty word in Britain though. It's
| part of the dreaded pan-European regulation that must be
| purged post haste.
|
| So maybe it's: wont_you_please_have_this_de
| licious_guano_biscuit_imported_thanks_to_our_splendid_bilat
| eral_trade_deal_with_vanuatu()
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Post-Brexit, GDPR is a dirty word in Britain though.
|
| Okay, UK GDPR. My sincere apologies.
| grishka wrote:
| Does PHP have a limit on the length of a function name?
| cardanome wrote:
| > Generally, such a limit is imposed by the threat of
| violence from other folks who interact with your code.
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4565805/is-there-a-
| limit...
|
| So no.
|
| Though funny side note, there is a historic reason that
| function names are so inconsistent in PHP: The length of
| the name of a function was used for hashing. So you
| wanted a to vary the length to achieve a roughly even
| distribution of lengths.
|
| https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/70691
| samstr wrote:
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Dialects are pretty variable in Britain (no pun intended), this
| one seems to prefer old money English.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Honestly, I've seen this thing multiple times over the last ten
| years and it's stupid.
|
| EDIT: Yeah, go ahead and down vote me. I'm British and I find it
| stupid. It's a weird caricature and unfunny.
| asddubs wrote:
| if it makes you feel any better, I agree it's pretty overplayed
| and lazy of a joke.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Clearly what's needed is a Malcolm Tucker version of this.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| do_this{ // try
|
| } you_fucking_what (Disappointment PSd){
| fuckety_bye() }
| t43562 wrote:
| In practise it's just #$%#$% annoying to have to write "color"
| instead of the proper spelling. #@$#@^% you you bastardizers of
| the beautiful word "colour"! :-D
| miiiiiike wrote:
| I loved traveling to the to the UK as an American. My only regret
| is that I din't learn the language first.
|
| So many of the things in London were slightly funny. Road and
| tube line/stop names (Piccadilly, Elephant & Castle), restaurants
| (Assault & Battery [fish & chips shop], Nicomsoup), the price of
| a doughnut and small coffee at Piccadilly (PS7.40) and
| staggering, jet lagged, into a Piccadilly Circus Starbucks for a
| morning Butty.
|
| This was also the trip that I played "Prounce That" with a group
| of Django developers.
|
| What's "Pronounce That"? Well, we noticed that we kept
| pronouncing things differently so we started taking turns writing
| down a common Python/Django package and saying "pronounce that".
|
| Psycho-PG was probably my favorite.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I (an American) definitely mentally pronounce psycopg2 as
| "Psycho-PG."
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I remember talking to an American visiting the UK who was
| doubled over in laughter at all the signs everywhere saying
| "Way out".
| [deleted]
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