P*rl in Latin, whither Python?

[Alex Martelli]

"Lieven Marchand" <mal at bewoner.dma.be> wrote in message
news:m31ywf1rc8.fsf at localhost.localdomain...
    [snip: many arguments curiously similar to mine, with curiously
     different slants... I've often wondered about parallels and
     differences between Belgium and Italy, but...:-)]
> had no installed base. Generally, the only way this gets solved and
> something new gets introduced is by heavy subsidizing for a number of
> years by a large corporate sponsor.

Transistors (replacing valves), nylon (often replacing silk), cars
(replacing horse-carriages), needed no such "sponsorships"; the
network-effects were reasonably limited there.  Ballpoint pens
vs fountain pens, safety razors vs freehand ones, mobile phones...

Unix, C, C++, Perl (vs awk/ksh/...), Pyton (to some extent -- we're
still "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers":-), Linux -- we've
got plenty of examples in our own backyard.

Some "magic" is necessary (depending on magnitude of pre-existing
network-effect), but it's rarely due to "heavy subsidizing" (it does
happen, as sometimes happens that a governmental mandate works,
but that's proving the rule by the exception:-).


> Using Linux since kernel 0.11 ;-)

I started with 0.9x, but I was moving from costly and clunky
(basically System-V) "Interactive Unix", and my humble 386
of the time was quite happy with that.  But the market's
network effects pushed me back to Win32 later (still hoping
for a wind shift...:-).


> Besides, I like languages for their complexity, their history, their
> irregularities. I like the fact that you can trace the disappearance
> of cases from English to your ancestors stay in the Danelaw. For that

It's one of the charms of any organic growth, yes.

> Languages aren't meant to be perfect. They're meant to grow and evolve
> while keeping traces of their history.

Whether they keep or drop each given 'trace of history' is up to
the same fickle Gods as any other language change, though.  But
I wonder -- are you familiar with (the late works of) Ludwig von
Wittgenstein...?

> That's why I also oppose most
> idiotic spelling reforms that get proposed on phonetic arguments. They
> distroy too much of the history of words.

That's like a self-proclaimed pro-Nature guy wanting to stop any
forest fire.  Hey, THEY HAPPEN, they're part of the same organic
growth as any other one of language's zillion wonderful shifts...
why oppose these specific changes out of uncounted many?!

Are you still spelling [insert cedillas as needed] "francais" as
"francois"?  Or is THIS 'spelling reform on phonetic arguments"
OK, just because it happened [thanks to the Academie
Francaise] before you were around to oppose it?

Are we Italians going to be allowed to call the laurel plant
"alloro"?  That particular spelling reform happened because
when Latin "laurum" became Italian, the actual sound still
spelled 'au' had been 'o' (non-diphtongal) for a millenium or
so, and so (given the feminine article) "la loro" (the laurel)
was what ignorant-of-history spellers used -- then shifting
to "l'alloro" because of assimilation (another element of
ignorance-of-history in the few Italian-literates around, say,
the 10th Century).  [We also have "rondine" (swallow) from
"hirundo" the other way 'round -- "l'irondine" -> "la rondine"].

Do you still write the 4th Emperor's name "Clavdivs" (as
they allegedly did in the cover of the latest edition of
Graves' novels about him) -- or have you adopted HIS
"spelling reform on phonetic arguments" (the invention
of the letter 'u') and spell him 'Claudius' now...?-)


The tendency of spelling to follow pronunciation along
similar (if slower) routes of phonetic shift is just one of
the natural avenues of growth (thus, of life) for language.

English is one outstanding exception (though its current
spelling is not quite like the one prevalent in the early
Renaissance [and already pretty much obsolete then wrt
pronunciation, as well as quite various], it's far closer
to it than to anything related to today's phonetics...). But
even it evolves... I guess you're one of those militating
against 'nite', 'lite', etc?-)


Alex