PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 15 May 2007 11:58:35 +0200, René Fleschenberg wrote:


> Unless you are 150% sure that there will *never* be the need for a
> person who does not know your language of choice to be able to read or
> modify your code, the language that "fits the environment best" is
> English.

Just a touch of hyperbole perhaps?

You know, it may come to a surprise to some people that English is not 
the only common language. In fact, it only ranks third, behind Mandarin 
and Spanish, and just above Arabic. Although the exact number of speakers 
vary according to the source you consult, the rankings are quite stable: 
Mandarin, Spanish, then English. Any of those languages could equally 
have claim to be the world's lingua franca.

And interestingly, with only one billion English speakers (as a first or 
second language) in the world, and 5.5 billion people who don't speak 
English, I think its probably fair to say that it is a small minority 
that speak English.


-- 
Steven.