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Comment by yen223 | Hacker News Reader

This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?

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In my country (Netherlands) people speak English quite well. My entire (CS) master was in English. So that means literature, class, assignments, exams, everything. I must say it did feel kind of awkward sometimes if you sit in a class where every single student and the teacher is native Dutch speaker, and still the course has to be done in English. But I think in the end it is worth it, because you learn all the terminology in English.

Actually it is funny, I only realized while reading this discussion that I always google my programming questions in English. It never occurred to me do google them in Dutch. I will try it today to see the results :)

Hehe, slight understatement. The Dutch learn English from 8 is it? Being Dutch, I guess you can't really relate to any of the other foreigners in the thread.

The Dutch all speak English so well you can move there and never bother learning Dutch. And unlike the French, who will fake not understanding, they seem positively delighted to get a chance to use English. In fact, I've had other English people complain to me that it's often very hard to get them to speak Dutch to you once they know you're English. The only time I've ever heard anyone complain is one night out in Amsterdam where we met up with some Dutch people and one of them said "Oh no, are we speaking English tonight?"

Although I'm a bit surprised they'd have entire uni courses in a foreign language, but I guess it makes sense in programming precisely because it's such an advantage.

I spent 4 years and some in NL(Den Haag) and I never got past the numbers and greetings in Dutch... By speaking English everywhere and with almost everyone made me never try and learn it.

France here - they don't. Relying on translated material is the kiss of death (it's old and will discourage exposure to the bleeding edge, trains will be leaving the station without you for the rest of your career.) I've noticed good forum answers though, mostly sysadmin related questions for Linux systems.

I always google in english and this is a huge plus comparing to my coworking looking for answers in french. Even when they find answers, the quantity and the quality is lesser.

Hopefully, it doesn't take a lot of english to be able to read programming question on stackoverflow. If you have difficulties reading english and you want to do programming, focusing on just that will help a lot. You don't really need to be able to speak or to listen which are harder (at least for me ).

I Germany, most professional literature is translated into German. Most developers I know prefer the English version though.

OT:

> "it's rather the exception than the norm"

> "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved."

How does one learn to use idioms like a native?

Reading literature, watching films, listening to the music.

Basically, delving into culture which contains common phrases, idioms and sayings scattered around. You hear/read them, understand meaning from context, and commit to memory so you can use it later on.

This is not really that different from how kids learn idioms too, isn't it?

By the way, a lot of idioms/saying are pretty similar in different countries. Their wording might be slightly off, but just by translating it in your mind you understand what it means.

Example: "Dark Horse" - One who was previously unknown and is now prominent. In Russian it is pretty much the same thing "Черная Лошадка" or if to translate it to English "Dark Horsey" ("horse" is used with affectionate diminutive suffix).

Source: Russian.

France here - starting as a student and stepping into the university library, it took me 30 seconds to realize that everything interesting was written in English and not being able to proficiently ingurgitate vast amount of it was going to be a problem. I just shunt French as written input for the next 5 years. When the valley called for a job, I was ready. Pasteur said "Chance favors the prepared mind" - he was relating it to the field of observation but it obviously applies almost anywhere.

Nowadays, if you have access to the Internet, there's no excuse not to be proficient with English. I've noticed during my travel that youngsters with a bit of education (high school or better) in countries where movies/series aren't translated (because the market is just too small) have very good English level. France has an official language which means that content is vastly translated and this-is-bad(TM) - the we are slower at getting better at English.

With the change to digital TV in France the original soundtrack is often available too so people can get exposure to English.

Indeed - it makes a few broadcasts palatable. I don't think that option is widely used though and I'd say mostly by people who don't speak French.

Casting aside writing in French for 5 years, did your ability to write in French degrade over that time?

I cast aside written French input. I still had to produce output. And I did learn, under supervision, how to write well during these years; using French as a target language but that knowledge has proven to be highly re-usable. I'm lost writing correct French without a spell checker.

> Nowadays, if you have access to the Internet, there's no excuse not to be proficient with English.

That is so true. A lot of my compatriots seem to not realize that they are missing an incredible amount of information by disregarding English. And I often find myself angry at them when they try to argue that English is not that important and they don't need to know/learn it. So frustrating.

> France has an official language which means that content is vastly translated and this-is-bad(TM) - the we are slower at getting better at English.

Again, completely agree. I'm a huge proponent of subtitled media content and believe that that's what should be used when showing movies/tv shows on national networks (cable or sat can do whatever they want).

I wonder about the mind/minds

I should say Chance favors those with a prepared mind or Chance favors only favor people with prepared minds, perhaps minds is plural in Spanish an singular in English and this is reasoning? Can anyone confirm this reasoning or I am completely confuse?

Edited: Gooling I found people with heads are smarter, so here they use the plural. So why mind and not minds.

http://gnosticwarrior.com/head-size-matters.html

"Chance favors those with a prepared mind" is grammatically correct and sounds just fine, it's just not as pithy as the original. You could also say "Chance favors prepared minds".

By repeatedly talking with natives. It'll infect you by sheer osmosis.

irc, or whatever people use these days. i've also always google'd tech related questions in english, never thought much about it just seemed to make sense.

movies and tv help in general, but live group communication with native speakers teaches you a lot about idioms and nuances in languages.

mind you, it'll also teach you a lot of bad grammar, as a non native speaker i would've never thought of eg. 'should of / should have' .

Very easily. But that might be because in Denmark, it's rather the exception than the norm that people don't know english. Of course with varying degrees of proficiency.

I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Speaking for myself, you cope by studying English. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved.

For what it's worth, your English is pretty good.

...uh...seems to have paid off well for you.

Based on the limited sample, you write it better than many "native" speakers.

I don't natively speak, read, or write English.

Damn. I wish I could show your comment to people like John Searle.

OReilly has released basically all of their books in Japanese

Japan is a bit of a special case since the Japanese can function well without learning English. In most European countries and increasingly throughout the rest of the world, English is the lingua franca.

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