HACKER Q&A
📣 JonathanBuchh

Experience learning English programming syntax as a non-native speaker?


Most (if not all) of the most popular programming languages use English syntax, however, for many programmers, English is not their first language. What is it like to learn English programming languages as a non-native speaker? Can you easily learn from online resources or read read documentation? Are classes taught in your native language or English? When learning syntax, do words feel arbitrary or can you tell why they were chosen?

Personally, English is my first language. I’m just curious about the experiences of others :)

  👤 dyingkneepad Accepted Answer ✓
The English subset used in these languages in way too small. Besides, it's not like "strcat", "fprintf" and "ioctl" are real English words.

In University the teachers used my local language for variable names and custom functions, but kept the English keywords and library functions, so programs would actually compile when typed in (we used paper and blackboards, this was in 2005, tests were also on paper). That was actually nice since it was very easy to understand that 'open()' was clearly not a function defined by our program.

What I'm salty about was learning Math in my local language. Since books all use symbols I never really learned how to pronounce math stuff in English even when reading English books. I have a hard time communicating math when speaking to my coworkers. "How is it that you talk about powers in English again? How am I supposed to pronounce O(log n^3)? How do I pronounce "5!"?".

👤 captain-phil
From my experience you will be able to learn the language part very very quickly. Programming is pretty much just a subset of English language. Like with all scientific fields, there’s a very limited set of ever-repeating words used. There are certainly courses in other languages, put if I was to give you some advice, I’d encourage you to start using English right from the start and not wasting any time on getting your English skills up to speed - they’ll have a tremendous return for you.

Have a lot of fun and enjoy your learning.

👤 detaro
Documentation can be a problem, the syntax itself for me never was.
👤 pawelmurias
It never was an issue, but I was already reading a lot of books in English as a child.