languages - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Mar 2000

You're right in that the dictionary has the task of letting everyone know
how the language IS spoken.  It's also the schools' job to teach the kids in
school how people DO speak, so they can do so well enough to hold their own,
rather than having to be supported by the government.

I believe this last part has been largely forgotten.

Studies have shown that average graduates from high schools throughout the
U.S. are quite incapable of reading a descriptive article and concluding
even the basics about what was written.  Unfortunately, it is not fair to
expect these same graduates to write better than they can read and
comprehend.

There's why our system is failing.  I can't hand a young college graduate a
data book and expect him to figure out what a given device does and how it
does it.  Consequently, I can't use current graduates at all.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Hans Franke &lt;Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de&gt;
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: languages

...
   > Well,
throw-in-the-towel is known (at least the acording
 > phrase is in wide use in Germany - just most don't know
 > the orgin), but what is Ebonyx ? 
> Ebonyx was the attempt by some boards of education in California to establish
...
 > the slang associated with Black culture as a
language so they could get funding
...
 > to teach english as a second language.  It was
always a brazen attempt to get
...
   funding,
nothing more. 
:))

> > Serious, ain't we are going exactly the same way with
> > programming languages as with real ones ? Just instead
> > of centuries, it took only some dozend years to go from
> > Machine code (grunting sounds) to ADA (Goethes Poems)
> *laugh*  I'm not sure I'd compare any computer language to Goethe, but
it's
...
   a good
analogy... :)

  > and only less than 10 years to fall back to
C ? 
> I think Hans is making a bit of a joke here, but he's not far from the
mark.
...
 > A living language is not a static thing.  It
grows.  It evolves.  Parts are
...
 > added and other parts dropped as the society that
speaks it changes. Until
...
 > recently (ie the last 20 years or so) English was
taught in a very prescriptive
...
 > way - x is the correct way to speak, where x is
whatever dictionary and/or
...
   grammar system
you embrace. 
No, I'm bloody serious (beside some humorous thing). In my opinion
C (and C++) is way down the ladder and as more as I think about I
find it more and more similar to the 'real' language thing discussed
in here.

I wouldn't consider C as anything 'grown'. maybe evolved in the
sense of degeneration.

I often think about what happened - why are all other languages
out classed ? Some beauty(and use)full are almost forgotten.
What happened to Pascal, Modula or Smalltalk (not to talk about
ADA which I still consider the best design ever) ?

There's only C (no, I don't recognize C++ or Java on their own).
And interestingly a still existing COBOL population.

> However in the late 60s (things take time to
> filter into the education system) some language experts - notably
Webster's
...
 > Dictionary among them - began to realise that
language *changes* over time.
...
   Websters
dictionary embraced a descriptive philosophy - we're not in the
 business of telling you how you SHOULD speak, only how you DO speak. 
  One of the results of this was the formation of
the American Heritage
 dictionary, which clung to the prescriptive philosophy. 
Well, to late over here - Standard German has equalized most German
languages and dialects. More than 100 years of Education did succeede.

Anyway
H.

--
VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen
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http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe 