> >BTW: I'm asking the English native speakers here: did aou 
> >ever encounter a foreign language _by far_ as easy to learn 
> >as smalltalk -- because that's actually what it should be 
> >compared to:learning a foreign language.
> 
> Yes, German.  Having a bit of familiarity with old english, as well as
> latin, and some french already, I found Germans spoke exactly 
> the right word in the right place, and after a few courses most 
> things in the grammar made perfect sense to me. I also liked the 
> way it sounded.  We've even borrowed a few into English; words 
> like "Angst" and "Kindergarten". 
> 
> The programmer-like way Germans have coined new words by 
> taking several words and removing the spaces 
> [fügenSieDieWörterSoZusammen] seemed to me an
> open invitation to do the same. An extensible language. Cool.

Okay this is totally off-topic but I really have to say I'm glad that German
is *not* the lingua franca of CS - I could not stand the way people 'bend'
natural language for making it formal enough for a parser to be easily
understood. This kind of pidgin German makes my stomach turn around...

So I'm quite happy to stick with English up to the point where parsers are
smart enough to accept correct sentences of the one language I really do
speak.

  Andreas

PS. Concerning [fügenSieDieWörterSoZusammen]: My favourite is
Kühlwasserkreislaufumwälzpumpe ;-)