Hi Stéphane,

2010/9/7 Stéphane Rollandin <lecteur at zogotounga.net>:
> IMHO, considering how close is reading and writing Smalltalk code to reading
> and writing English text, I don't see how translating books will be enough
> to spread Smalltalk in the world: one has to read english to make sense of
> most methods usage... I believe Smalltalk is doomed to be a programming
> language for English speakers; that's unfortunate but I don't see a way out
> of that situation.

eh, Java and Ruby use lots of English words as well, and look at their
success. In fact, most programming languages adopt English as the
language for keywords and such.

But that is probably not what you mean, right? Are you alluding to
Smalltalk "grammar" and the way it is related to English?

I think I recall a blog post by Canol Gökel, wherein he compared
Smalltalk and Turkish grammars and found them to be surprisingly
similar. Let me see ... yes, here it is:
http://smalltalk.gnu.org/blog/zuluuuuuu/smalltalk-and-turkish

Following Canol's thoughts, Smalltalk seems to be closer to Turkish
than to English after all. :-)

That aside, I really don't think it's a big problem. People doing
programming typically pick up their share of required English quickly
as they go along learning the language.

If you really insist on turning Smalltalk more, say, French, how about
"simply" translating all keyword messages to French? (I'd be more on
the German side, was I to pursue such a quest.)

Would I prefer

persons collect: [ :p | p firstName ]

over

personen sammle: [ :p | p vorname ]

?

Best,

Michael