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Comment by Swiffy0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm Finnish and in in Finnish we translate "call" in function context as "kutsua", which when translated back into English becomes "invite" or "summon".

So at least in Finnish the word "call" is considered to mean what it means in a context like "a mother called her children back inside from the yard" instead of "call" as in "Joe made a call to his friend" or "what do you call this color?".

Just felt like sharing.

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In German, we use "aufrufen", which means "to call up" if you translate it fragment-by-fragment, and in pre-computer times would (as far as I know) only be understood as "to call somebody up by their name or nummer" (like a teacher asking a student to speak or get up) when used with a direct object (as it is for functions).

It's also separate from the verb for making a phone call, which would be "anrufen".

Interesting! Across the lake in Sweden we do use "anropa" for calling subprograms. I've never heard anyone in that context use "uppropa" which would be the direct translation of aufrufen.

Same in Dutch. “Oproepen” means “to summon”. We would use “aanroepen”.

In russian it's kind of similar, back translation is "call by phone", "summon", "invite".

In Norway it is «funksjonskall», or literally function call. And the «kall» / «call» is just that, a call for something.

'Summon' implies a bit of eldritch horror in the code, which is very appropriate at times. 'Invite' could also imply it's like a demon or vampire, which also works!

An interesting aside and/or follow-on:

> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a computer science textbook by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. It is known as the "Wizard Book" in hacker culture.[1] It teaches fundamental principles of computer programming, including recursion, abstraction, modularity, and programming language design and implementation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...

Another one:

> "Be, and it is" (Arabic: كُن فَيَكُونُ; kun fa-yakūn) is a Quranic phrase referring to the creation by God′s command.[1][2] In Arabic, the phrase consists of two words; the first word is kun for the imperative verb "be" and is spelled with the letters kāf and nūn. The second word fa-yakun means "it is [done]".[3]

> (image of verse 2:117) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:002117_Al-Baqrah_Urd...

> The phrase at the end of the verse 2:117 > Kun fa-yakūn has its reference in the Quran cited as a symbol or sign of God's supreme creative power. There are eight references to the phrase in the Quran:[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be,_and_it_is

I wonder if “Be” would be imperative or functional. Is “Be” another name for `Unit()`? Or, would it be more Lisp-like `(be unit)`?

“be” was a reserved keyword in early Rust, intended to be used in place of “return” (or “ret”, as it was spelled at the time) for tail calls.

It's the same in Greek, as well.

Unrelated, but if you happen to be in Helsinki, you should join the local Hacker News meetup: https://bit.ly/helsinkihn

I had always assumed it meant call as in to call up or call over. I'd never considered that people may think it meant call as in name

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