Comment by kazinator
8 years ago
CAR and CDR can possibly work very well in Japanese, I have discovered:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp_ja/comments/78i4ws/
CAR -> karu -> 借る (to borrow)
CDR -> kudaru -> 下る (to descend)
"Borrow" the first value/reference, or "descend" to the next cell.
The usual readings are カー/クダー (kaa/kudaa); these have to be altered to have a final ル (ru) rather than "aa".
The world isn't all English; someone's Anglo-centric quibble about how "cdr" doesn't mean anything means nothing to someone speaking another language.
By the way, descend starts with D:
C(Ante-, Ascend)R
C(Descend)R
I myself seem to be carrying the vestiges of a poorly articulated, subconscious connection to anno domini (A.D.).
"The world isn't all English"
But the history of computing largely is (not totally of course, but largely).
If we were discussing sushi, or katanas, or bushido, or netsuke, would you complain about the language being "Japanese-centric"?
If we were discussing grand opera (or, for that matter, having a technical discussion of almost any kind of music), would you complain about the language being "Italian-centric"?
> ... would you complain about the language being ..
I'm not sure there was a complaint there. To me, it read more like an interesting side note.
> would you complain
I'm not complaining that programming languages use words based on English; my point is about English speakers having bikeshedding quibbles about those words that don't mean anything to non-English-speakers.
Suppose some Italian, due to some Italian reasons, doesn't like something about the music term dal segno or any other term. Why would I care, know what I mean.
Hmm... if you didn't care, why would you be reading the Italian quibble on a history site written in Italian?
I mean, this was quite clearly a page about the history of the terms, right?
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