this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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Programming
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I'm trying to think of examples of this, and I actually don't know that this is true. Here are the examples I can think of:
.method()syntax is similar to "subject-verb" order, but we also havefunction(self, ...)which is the reverse of that.for foo in baris used in a few languages (or sometimesforeach). But many languages use a totally non-English construct, such asfor i = 0; i < limit; i++orfor (auto foo : bar).What else is there?
Drawing on Japanese, which is the only non-English language I have significant experience with,
object.method(parameter)would feel more natural asobject.(parameter)method, possibly even replacing the period separator with a Japanese grammatical construct (with no equivalent in English) that really suits this use case. Even the alternativefunction(self, parameter, ...)would mesh better with natural Japanese grammar as(self、parameter、〜)function. The majority of human languages have sentences which run Subject-Verb-Object, but a handful which includes Japanese run in the order Subject-Object-Verb.I gave an example of an alternative
for...inloop in another comment here, so I won't rehash it here. But following the general flow of Japanese grammar, thatforat the beginning of the statement would feel much more natural as aで(or "with") at the end of the statement, since particles (somewhat similar to prepositions in English) go after the noun that they indicate, rather than before. And since semicolons don't exist in Japanese either, even they might be replaced with a particle like "と".There aren't any big problems here, but a plethora of little things that can slowly add up.
Object wa parameter o method desu