[Python-ideas] Truly international Python

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Dima Tisnek writes:
 > Let's recall Guido's old Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) proposal.
 > 
 > Nowadays that Python is established, it's high time to push Python
 > into education, especially first programming language education. I
 > think, in the modern world it means pre-school.
 > 
 > Now the larger part of the world's children doesn't learn English
 > before school, therefore we need to have truly localized Python.

Not really.  Python is a conventional programming language; you need
to learn its syntax and semantics, which can't be changed when you
change the strings that denote the keywords and operators.  It's
programming semantics that are foreign to almost all people, whether
native English speakers or not.  That's the difficult hurdle to
overcome, not memorizing a few dozen keywords, builtins, and module
names in an unfamiliar alphabet.  *Especially* for preschoolers.  Put
language in front of them, and they *will* learn it (if it interests
them at all, and sometimes even if not).

At least for Japanese children, they start learning the alphabet as
early as they learn even kana (the Japanese "alphabet"), let alone
kanji (the thousands of Chinese ideographs).  How else can a kid
recognize "Coke" or "Pringles" in the grocery store or at a vending
machine?  Surely that's far more important (to the kid) than learning
Python!<wink>

Localized identifiers, on the other hand, *are* useful because they
help the programmer in the task of design by activating connotations
of domain knowledge in the real world.  But Python already has those.