This is a new blog which will explore a single fact every day. I have started this blog to impart information to my 6 year old son. This format seems (based on past experiments balancing depth versus breadth) to be a good cadence to share thoughts with my son.
This first factoid is about languages.
There are estimated to be 6000 - 7000 human languages in the world (source). These languages are used for humans to communicate with other humans either in spoken form or through signs. There are also several programming languages - languages used to talk to computers and mobile phones and tablets. One estimate counts about 8500 programming languages (source - zoom in if you cannot see each language name).
It is fascinating that there are more programming languages than human languages, considering human languages have been around since the beginning of human civilization, whereas programming languages began only in the 1930s.
All languages have rules - however, programming languages have more precise rules than human languages. In a human language, the situation in which the language is used plays a key role to understand what is being said, whereas in a programming language, you have to be very specific about what you are saying.
Most common languages that we use have a spoken form and a written form called script. For example, this page is written in the English written form, and when you read it aloud, you are using its spoken form. Some languages have more than one written form - like Japanese that has three written forms, called hiragana, katakana and kanji.
Written forms of human languages (called scripts) are of two main kinds - sound based written forms, called phonetic scripts, such as in English, and pictorial written forms where each symbol is a picture that depicts a concept, like in Kanji. Sound based scripts are themselves of two kinds - the first is precise phonetic scripts, such as in Hindi and Sanskrit where the written form translates to exact sound as read out. The second is the more complex form found in English, where the spelling itself doesn't translate to a specific sound, unless you know the language - for instance, the word 'the' is pronounced in a way that is not exactly the sounds made by t, h and e. The word 'psychology' has the letter 'p' silent. An interesting consequence of this difference between precise sound based scripts and more complex ones is that the precise ones can be read out aloud by anyone, whereas the complex ones require you to learn the words and their pronunciations. This is why there are spelling competitions in English where you have to be able to spell words by hearing their sound, whereas a spelling competition in Hindi would be much easier, since the sound would (in most cases) tell you exactly how to write the word.
Programming languages are fun to learn, as the computer does exactly what you say - if you say something wrong, the computer will respond with an error or a wrong response. If you say something correct, the computer will behave as you expect. Some examples of programming languages are C, C++, Java, C#, Basic, Ruby, Python, Perl, Objective C and Lua. We will talk more about programming languages in future factoids.
This ends our first factoid about languages.
This first factoid is about languages.
There are estimated to be 6000 - 7000 human languages in the world (source). These languages are used for humans to communicate with other humans either in spoken form or through signs. There are also several programming languages - languages used to talk to computers and mobile phones and tablets. One estimate counts about 8500 programming languages (source - zoom in if you cannot see each language name).
It is fascinating that there are more programming languages than human languages, considering human languages have been around since the beginning of human civilization, whereas programming languages began only in the 1930s.
All languages have rules - however, programming languages have more precise rules than human languages. In a human language, the situation in which the language is used plays a key role to understand what is being said, whereas in a programming language, you have to be very specific about what you are saying.
Most common languages that we use have a spoken form and a written form called script. For example, this page is written in the English written form, and when you read it aloud, you are using its spoken form. Some languages have more than one written form - like Japanese that has three written forms, called hiragana, katakana and kanji.
Written forms of human languages (called scripts) are of two main kinds - sound based written forms, called phonetic scripts, such as in English, and pictorial written forms where each symbol is a picture that depicts a concept, like in Kanji. Sound based scripts are themselves of two kinds - the first is precise phonetic scripts, such as in Hindi and Sanskrit where the written form translates to exact sound as read out. The second is the more complex form found in English, where the spelling itself doesn't translate to a specific sound, unless you know the language - for instance, the word 'the' is pronounced in a way that is not exactly the sounds made by t, h and e. The word 'psychology' has the letter 'p' silent. An interesting consequence of this difference between precise sound based scripts and more complex ones is that the precise ones can be read out aloud by anyone, whereas the complex ones require you to learn the words and their pronunciations. This is why there are spelling competitions in English where you have to be able to spell words by hearing their sound, whereas a spelling competition in Hindi would be much easier, since the sound would (in most cases) tell you exactly how to write the word.
Programming languages are fun to learn, as the computer does exactly what you say - if you say something wrong, the computer will respond with an error or a wrong response. If you say something correct, the computer will behave as you expect. Some examples of programming languages are C, C++, Java, C#, Basic, Ruby, Python, Perl, Objective C and Lua. We will talk more about programming languages in future factoids.
This ends our first factoid about languages.
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