I can’t believe nobody has done this list yet. I mean, there is one about names, one about time and many others on other topics, but not one about languages yet (except one honorable mention that comes close). So, here’s my attempt to list all the misconceptions and prejudices I’ve come across in the course of my long and illustrious career in software localisation and language technology. Enjoy – and send me your own ones!

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[+] 72 points 2 years ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (11 children)
  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    This. When I was in Mexico on my honeymoon, Google kept redirecting me to their .mx version of Google; despite my inability to read Spanish.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    It would be a useful way to predict it possibly, but presumably the author meant if you have support for localization, you also provide an obvious and easy means of changing the language.

    More importantly, you should be using the language an existing user has already used in the past.

    Edit: come to think of it, this is less a programmer problem, and more of a UX problem. Obviously as programmers we need to take UX into consideration, but in all my products I've worked on, UX is specified already by a UX designer.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's not even that, there are multiple languages spoken in the same region. Webpages should just use the language the browser tells it to use.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I had assumed the author didn't limit his statements to web browsers. If it's an application on a user's box, they should be using the language the OS provides.

    In the case of less complex hardware, IoT or embedded devices with localization support, you would likely have another strategy if it doesn't have a setup process. For something without internet or GPS, you can't do this obviously. For something without a GUI, it's unlikely to have localization support without direct design consideration for it's destination.

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    [–] 45 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Icons that are based on English puns and wordplay are easily understood by speakers of other languages.

    This reminded me of one of those Top Gear "drive across a foreign country in weird vehicles" specials where Jeremy Clarkson needed to borrow a cable to jump-start his car, and laboriously mimed out jumping for "jump", and walking a dog for "lead", to a perplexed local. Richard Hammond was cracking up but finally managed to point out what a fool Clarkson was being.

    Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

    And as an addendum to this, in 2025 nobody should be using Windows' "Non-latin/-unicode character set" setting to guess the user's preferred language. That's a pre-WinXP kludge. I'm specifically looking at you, Intel integrated graphics software writers, but you have plenty of company, don't worry.

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

    This makes me so angry. It really really really really really does.

    Despite setting everything to English I still get my receipts in French. And all because my IP is CG-NAT to the capital which is marked as french speaking.

    What is so hard about letting me decide. The absolute fucking arrogance thinking you as a company know better than me in which language I would like to be served.

    Eat a dick Microsoft.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Falsehoods US programmers believe about languages

    The US-centric, anglo-saxon centric worldview strikes again 😮‍💨 For those us that speak multiple languages, many of these are revelations...

    Also, if they are, it's best to add examples, otherwise these are just random claims without any sources to back them up.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    Ironically, many languages that violate these rules are spoken in the US natively. People in the US just like to forget that there are other natively spoken languages (spoken since before English was introduced to the continent even).

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (21 children)

    Most of these just seem like basic educational issues except this one imo:

    Every language has words for yes and no.

    I want to see more than like 1 or 2 counterexamples. I'm pretty interested in linguistics on an amateur level. Don't believe I've heard of that one before now.

    edit: in retrospect I do think I remember hearing this about Irish and Latin and some older languages. Interesting to know there are so many. I know the theory that language is related to thought patterns is semi-debunked, but I can't help but think that things like this indicate something about the cultures associated with a language.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    My wife is Vietnamese, so I have a basic grasp of it, but they don't really have a word for yes.
    The verb itself is used to answer the question.
    Want something to drink? Drink. Want to go to the park? Go.

    They have a word for no, but as you can probably ascertain, it's only for the negative.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Scottish Gaelic doesn't have 'yes' or 'no' - you answer with the positive or negative form of the verb used in the question.

    http://www.gaidhliggachlatha.com/blog-mios-na-gaidhlig/how-to-say-yes-and-no-in-scottish-gaelic

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Arabic doesn't have a word for "yes". I don't think most semitic languages do either [Classical Hebrew does not, but Modern Hebrew does, however, the word they use in modern Hebrew is the word for "Thusly", that is now a particle]. In fact you can see that proto-indo European didn't have a word for yes: Greek is ναι, but the romance languages are si (I am pretty sure French oui is actually derived from the same root as Spanish and Italian. Could be wrong) and if my memories is correct (and it may not be) classical Latin didn't have a word for yes. And the Germanic words yes/ja have a similar origin. I can't speak to the other IE languages unfortunately.

    I know there are also language families that don't have a single word for no, but use a negation mood on the verb. I unfortunately can't give you an example of this. But it should be fun to look up!

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Oui and si are derived from different roots. Oui is from Latin hoc ille, while si is from Latin sic.

    There is actually a si in French that also means yes and comes from the same root as the Spanish and Italian si. However, its usage is much more limited. It's only used to express disagreement. For example, if I said "Potato chips don't taste good." and you wanted to say "Yes, they do!", then you could use si.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Not sure about that one but the following one:

    In each language, the words for yes and no never change, regardless of which question they are answering.

    This happens in Danish actually. Example:

    Kan du lide is? (Do you like ice cream?)
    Ja
    Kan du ikke lide is? (Do you not like ice cream?)
    Jo

    So in Danish we have "ja" which means "yes" but "jo" is used instead when answering a negative question, so as to confirm what the negative question asked. This is kind of annoying in English cause if you ask "Do you not like ice cream?" then if you say "yes" does that mean "yes I like ice cream" or does it mean "yes I do not like ice cream"? That's what "jo" disambiguates.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    @TrickDacy @rimu but use them much more restrictively. As an example in Thai, "yes" is "chai", but is used only in a few situations, like if a question is ended with "chai mai" (yes followed by word forming polar question).

    In interfaces you can't usually put this as yes/no buttons, but rather usually one is a verb like "khao" ("come/go in") and the other is the same word prefixed with mai ("not", different tone from the other "mai" i mentioned).

    Chinese is similar but I don't know it as well.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    @TrickDacy @rimu another example is Irish, which I've heard claim as an explanation for Irish English also contains more of "it is/isn't" and such constructs in favour of yes no.

    Another European example is Finnish which has yes but not no. You want me to go on?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Well, I only know of two off the top of my head, but I really doubt they're the only examples: Irish and Mandarin Chinese.

    I think some Irish don't even habitually use them when speaking English. If you ask them "Are you ok?" they'd answer "I am" or "I am not."

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Another couple missing:

    • every language uses gendered nouns/verbs/adjectives/pronouns/etc
    • no language uses gendered nouns/verbs/adjectives/pronouns/etc
    • pronouns referring to people are always gendered
    • pronouns are always singular (1) or plural (2+)

    A fun language to learn regarding these is Hawaiian, where the language uses a-class and o-class rather than masculine and feminine, and which you use is largely based on how much control you have over it.

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago
    • There is always only one correct way to spell anything.

    “gray" and "grey" are both correct spellings of the color between black and white.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Segmenting a text into sentences is as easy as splitting on end-of-sentence punctuation.

    Is there a language this actually isn't true for? It seems oddly specific like a lot of the others and I don't think I know of one that does this. Except maybe some wack ass conlangs of course.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago*

    Even in english this isn't true, for example dots can appear inside a sentence for multiple reasons (a decimal number, an abbreviation, a quotation, three dots, etc, etc), which would make you split it into more than one piece.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

    English. I can go to the store and buy a sandwich for $8.99 all in one sentence, but splitting it on periods gives you two sentences.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    "All languages (that use the Latin alphabet) have the same alphabetical sorting order." oh this one is very unexpected to me. Does someone know an example? I'm curious

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    In Denmark we have the digraph "aa" that is the same as "å". Since "å" is the last letter in the Danish alphabet, "aa" must be sorted likewise. Hence the ordering Aalborg -> Allerup -> Middelfart is incorrect and the correct ordering is Allerup -> Middelfart -> Aalborg.

    The exception is if two a's are pronounced as separate vowels e.g. due to compounding words: "ekstra" + "arbejde" gives "ekstraarbejde" but here it is not pronounced as "å" so ekstraarbejde -> ekstrabetaling is correct ordering as well

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    The last three I think are especially important - many people don't really understand how political national flags can be and that they never really just represent a people/region/language in a completely unbiased way.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    There are perfect guidelines on preparing translatable strings in the GNU gettext documentation.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    "Every country has exactly one “national” language." - Switzerland meanwhile lol

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