Multibyte Character Surport for Python

[Alex Martelli]

Kragen Sitaker wrote:

> Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
>> This one person has had this dubious "pleasure" and loathes the idea
>> with a vengeance.  The very *IDEA* of cutting off the huge majority of
>> programmers in the world, who don't understand Italian, from being
>> able to understand and work with my code, is utterly abhorrent to me.
> 
> For any natural language X, it is the case that the huge majority of
> people in the world do not understand X.  As the population of

An interesting assertion, for which I'd like you to bring some supporting
statistics.  What proportion of literate human beings does not understand
English (including as a 2nd and 3rd language)?  I can't find convincing
statistics on the net, only suggestive information on anecdotical level,
e.g., that English is used about exclusively in India, the most populous
country in the world, for communication involving more than one of the
country's states/regions -- but I have no idea about what proportion of
Indian citizens are ever involved in such communications, versus those
who spend all of their life in or near their village and need never worry
about communication with connationals from elsewhere (and of the latter,
how many are literate? we can't really count illiterates as candidate
programmers, I think -- despite all of the "point and grunt" rhetoric).

It appears to me that, not just in India, but in other populous countries
with a huge variety of mother-tongues, English is preferred, as being more
politically and culturally neutral than the mother-tongue of the dominant
region or tribe, for inter-regional and inter-tribal communication by people
belonging to other tribes or regions (of course, for the same reason it may
be fought against by people who do belong to the dominant region or tribe).
But here, too, judging what proportion of a region's population is ever
involved with any interregional communication at all seems difficult.

And, how are the trends?  Again I have no objective basis for judgment,
only guesses based on biased personal observation and anecdotes.  When I
interact with recent immigrants and refugees into Italy, mostly from
Northern Africa, the Balcans, and the Near and Middle East, I seem to
have an easier time communicating with them in English than in Italian
(or French, which also has some use for that) -- almost as if those people
had striven to acquire some elements of English more than of Italian,
even though they were going to come here (of course, I speak no Arabic,
no Slavic tongue, no Albanian, no Turk, nor Kurdish -- should I acquire
all of them, communication with immigrants and refugees would no doubt
be easier -- but, as most Western Europeans share my limitations on
linguistic proficiency and have even less motivation than I do to remedy
them, the role of English as common grounds for such communication would
overall remain, no matter what my own studies could be).  Of course, one
could argue that the masses of immigrants and refugees *are* "elite", no
matter how hard it seems to view them this way -- e.g., average number
of years of schooling for (say) Tunisians who emigrate to Europe is
higher (in a statistically significant way) than for Tunisians who stay
in Tunisia (the "real elite", the tiny crust of a poor country's people
who have substantial power and wealth there, are modestly motivated to
flee their country; but the poorest of the poor may even lack the
resources to finance emigration at all) -- this, I have heard, is the
most substantial difference between the current waves of migration and
previous ones (e.g., the millions of Italians who migrated in the past
didn't tend to have statistically-significant differences in schooling
wrt those who stayed).

I do see a burning urge for some English education at all levels around
me.  One of the promises who swept our current government into power was
to meet this demand (one of the pillars in their electoral campaign was
to push "le tre 'i': Inglese, Internet, Impresa" -- English, Internet,
Entrepreneurship -- however empty and populistic you may judge these
electoral promises, do notice that English was in FIRST place).  Qualified
teachers of French, Spanish, German, etc, go begging -- well over 90%
of students in our schools demand English as the foreign tongue to be
taught.  You can hardly read Italian newspapers any more without a
modicum of English vocabulary -- as my father, 80 years old and knowing
French and German (as well as Italian) but not English, often bitterly
remarks (he's _particularly_ bitter at the prevalence of English in his
profession, medicine, where he's still active as a university professor
and consultant).  Most often, English words and phrases are introduced
to replace perfectly good, usable, and widely used Italian equivalents,
rather than to tag new concepts.  You hardly hear anybody any more
talking about the "allenatore" of a football team, for example -- it's
invariably the "trainer".  Ferrari dominates Formula 1 racing, but you
never hear anybody any more talking about them as a "squadra" -- it's
*always* "team".  Youth in the street may protest peacefully against
globalization, or not so peacefully at all, but the key words in their
protest in either case are never "no al globale", but rather "no global", 
never "niente marchi", but "no logo".  More moderate left, defeated in
last year's elections and still considering how to rebuild a political
strategy, is not proposing a new "partito dei lavoratori" or even a
"partito laburista", but directly a "Labour Party".  The growing tide
of English words is absolutely transversal across political nuances,
fields of endeavour, cultural levels, socio-economic classes.

Italy is, admittedly, peculiarly prone to esterophily.  Even before
"team" entered the local linguistic arena, you were as likely to hear
"equipe" as "team".  But in recent decades the focus has switched
entirely to English, and the pace accelerates, it appears to me.  Sure,
considering pro-capita income, Italy, and all of Western Europe, is
no doubt "elite", in a world-wide sense.  But so are cultures that
are as peculiarly insular as Italy is open to the world, such as Japan.
It seems to me that this fight is far from decided.

> programmers becomes less Americocentric and less educated (that is, as
> programming becomes easier and more useful), it is likely to be the
> case that the majority of programmers in the world will not understand
> English.

It does not seem to me that you've made a case for the trend being
in this direction.  Again judging from local trends, a far higher
percentage of programmers have _some_ (often modest) grasp of English
today, than was the case a few decades ago, where foreign languages
were not taught in _all_ schools (now they're taught starting from
the first year in school) and what was taught was more often French
than English (German and Spanish were always marginal in our schools,
and this hasn't changed much with time).  Today I think it would be
laughable, unthinkable to launch an "italianized" language, as many
local suppliers (mostly Olivetti, now out of the computer market)
repeatedly attempted (with signal failures) decades ago.

> It is unfortunate that this state is abhorrent to you, but the current
> state of programming --- confined to the elite --- is a greater evil.

We're not really talking of current states so much as trends towards
the future.  I don't think there can be a greater evil than promoting
the division of the world into pieces unable to communicate with each
other, to understand each other at some level, and therefore to
cooperate peacefully and fruitfully.  Programming is cool, but peace
and prosperity require mutual understanding and collaboration even
more than they require programming.  I don't believe we have to choose,
but, if we did, I would have no hesitation choosing to promote an
effort to help people communicate with each other and share the
results of their efforts, over any effort pushing the other way, even
if the latter was touted as promoting even wider access to programming.


> But variable and function names belong to the programmer and the
> program's audience, not the notation, and should be written in the
> language that affords these people the most expressive power.

Anybody is fully entitled to make his or her own choices between
natural language to use for each form of his or her impression.  But
I hope that Python never actively *helps* people choose insularity and
isolation from the world in preference to openness and sharing.


Alex