Is Python the Esperanto of programming languages?

[Andy Jewell]

Pythonistas,

I never intended to provoke a huge off-topic thread, with my little throw-away 
remark...

If it's all got too off-topic, maybe we should spawn a new sub-group, maybe 
comp.lang.python.esperanto.sux ... ? :-)  Hopefully this won't spawn another 
78-odd messages, though!  We could always take over an empty 
humanities.language sub-group (if there were one)...

But it's been interesting following the ways the thread has developed.  I 
think it says something rather nice about this newsgroup.  

I've largely refrained from adding fuel to the fire... but I can't let this 
(final) thought go:

Do any of you know sign-language?  My misses is learning British Sign 
Language, mostly simple stuff at the moment, but we were discussing her most 
recent lesson, and it occurred to me that BSL (and maybe ASL too) seem to be 
much more regular than English.  Sam (the misses) hasn't done much with 
tenses yet, but seems to think that they are expressed explicitly.  

Of course, there are no inflections, nor any tonality.  The 'redundancy' that 
the signs lack is made up for by the prescribed lip and face movements 
associated with each sign - derived from the English pronunciation - that 
disambiguate similar looking signs.  The word ordering seems to be quite 
free, but there is also a sort of 'right' way to say things, that 'sounds' 
better.  

Purely out of interest, Sam is going to emai her tutor to ask about the 
accuracy of all the above.

Are there any signing Pythonistas out there?  I'd like to know your take on 
this, particularly if you use a sign language that is not BSL, ASL or 
Macaton.  I'm just guessing, but I'm sure there must be a Chinese Sign 
Language...  does that share common ground with ASL and BSL?


Gotta slither,
regards, andyj