I was marvelling at some of the forum users we see here. I refer to the users whos native language is not English. Consider this, To effectively program with Xojo, they need to understand the English based syntax of this language. They need to have a pretty good handle on English to convey their queries and programming concepts. On top of that, the need to be pretty skilled at using their own language. The next time you see an Italian or German post on this forum, consider the challenge of swapping back and forth between the 3 languages. I still have difficulty co-ordinating walking and chewing gum at the same time. Also, why does my Mac try to automatically replace the word ‘Xojo’ with ‘Mojo’.
Interesting Topic. As for my experience as an italian native speaker, I can say that it may have happened sometimes, to feel, someway, uncomfortable with dealing with something written in a language different from italian, but, usually, I found no main issue. Some difficult may arise, not from coding itself, but when looking around for new complex stuff and concepts to learn. Just to talk about a real situation, I am, currently. studying Regex and it may happen sometimes to have the need to stay more focused on some sentences to grasp the whole concept, but that, usually do not prevent me from getting, eventually, the point. Then, of course, it also depends on how they approach the problem and how people are prone to get involved in reading/studying something written in a language different from their own.
It can be even more complicated: being Swiss like I am…
You use two languages in your daily life.
I grew up in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. There you live with two different forms of the German language. One is for conversation, the other one is for reading and writing. They are far apart of each other - like Middle English from today’s English. The dialect is called Alemannic German and the offfical language Swiss Standard German. In addition there is not one dialect, but 7 main dialects, partially very different - since they are only spoken they even vary from valley to valley.
Your first foreign language
Over the years you realize that Swiss Standard German - which you only read and write but almost never speak - is not exactly the same as the one in Germany (above all vocabulary-wise). And since you are only fluent in your dialect, speaking German is like speaking a foreign language, especially when speaking to Germans and Austrians. I’ve lived in Berlin for 6 years now, and people here still make remarks about my neat Swiss-German influenced German.
Your second foreign language
Switzerland has four official languages: French, German, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romanic. In school your first foreign language is not English, but one of the other three official languages - in the German speaking part of Switzerland usually French.
Your third foreign language
English, finally. I learned English not in school - it was not mandatory (might be nowadays). In the 70s/80s English was not considered an important language in Switzerland. I learned English in the movies - cinemas in Switzerland show foreign films almost always subtitled.
Like most Swedes, I started studying English in fourth grade until graduation 8 years later.
Though much have been learned by watching movies and reading stuff on the internet. Like this forum for example where the majority seems to be native English speakers.
I’ve also studied French for a while but that didn’t stick. While I was in Paris some years ago I managed to understand some read words though. Kind of regret I don’t speak French now. Beautiful language.
To the subject.
Since I do consider myself somewhat good at English I don’t have the language issue coding in Xojo 
Hope people don’t find my English hard to understand? 
[quote=100278:@Albin Kiland]Hope people don’t find my English hard to understand?[/quote] On the contrary Albin, its refreshing to read English written without the influence of contractions and slang like ‘coz’,‘wuz’,‘LAMAO’ and so on. That goes for all the others to contribute to this thread. Really good to read great English. And no I am not English. Just a fan of our mother tongue.
In the mid 90’s Microsoft shipped Excel 5.0 (95) and we could use our native languages for coding. It didn’t turn out well as developers across the world grow up with English. Personally I had trouble with all basic structures like IF…End If, For…Next etc.
There is a conundrum that many people dont think of when writing a multi-language capable app. If you app uses a localisation file to replace text on controls with a nominated language. You usually need to display a list or prompt saying"select your language" during program initialisation. The conundrum comes in asking the user to select their language. What language do you prompt your user in???
[quote=100258:@Chris Benton]Also, why does my Mac try to automatically replace the word ‘Xojo’ with ‘Mojo’.
[/quote]
If you google something Xojo, which incidentally is the only way to get information when you don’t have the exact spelling of something in the LR (time for an improved search, Xojo ?), you may be treated to ‘Dojo’ as well. Seems phonetic search has issues with the exact pronunciation of ‘X’.
I may have the wrong image of Australia, but is that not a mainly English speaking continent (apart from Aborigine languages, I would believe). So you may not have much chances to be exposed to foreign languages in your daily life.
In Los Angeles, diversity may not be as striking, but in some quarters like Downtown, Spanish is unavoidable. In New York the same tourist crowd as Paris walks the streets, and strong ethnic communities keep the tradition of their origins, including the language.
Europe is made of a patchwork of cultures inhabiting relatively small territories, where local vocabulary can change, as well as regional languages. Eli Ott describes it very well. In the EU, 26 different nations interact with each its own official language, in a Parliament where the common vehicular language is mainly English (French was the diplomatic language in the 1900’s). Walking the streets of Paris, one will hear all sorts of different languages spoken by many tourists changing with the holidays. Among Parisians which all come from different horizons, a lot still keep their mother tongue handy and enjoy a chat with fellow impatriates : English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Arabic, African languages, Russian, Polish… Please forgive me if I forgot some.
I am French, but my grand mother was Argentine, and my nanny Spanish. So I got exposed to Spanish and French languages from the onset. Amazing as it may seem, kids very quickly compartiment their brain to think and speak in the proper language to address locutors of each language they know. From as long as I remember, I switched without even thinking about it from Spanish to French and back to speak to dad and grand’ma. I learned English at school around the age of 10. After several years in the U.S., I do not have to struggle to switch between the three languages I speak. The only problem I often encounter is to find a word in a language that I was only exposed in another. Vocabulary is tied to life experiences, and may lack in some fields.
Altogether, programming in English has been the only natural course since the beginning of computers. The French would not be themselves if they had not tried their own way, and in the 80’s there was a movement for ‘Basicois’, where a team of pasionarias created a preprocessor where all GWBasic keywords where translated in Voltaire linguo : Vaten for Goto, Imprime for Print, and so on. It went the way of the dinosaurs
To summarize, mastering several languages may not be as difficult as may seem : it may very well be linked to early exposure. The best chance you may give your kids to be fluent in other languages, is to expose them as early as possible. Experiment show it works in school on kids as early as 4. And then it becomes a reflex, as transparent as walking
Localizing an app is often a daunting task, not so much in terms of engineering as in terms of terminology. What to do when in a given language, terminology varies considerably ? In France French, a browser is a ‘navigateur’, when in Quebec, it is a ‘butineur’…
It seems the prompting issue is addressed by system dev at Apple and MS the same way : start the app in the language of the system. That is what Google does for Chrome, as well as its web site. If opened from France, google.com speaks French as default. It can be annoying, as the site itself is hosted in France, and some features become unavailable.
Not much I can disagree with Michael. From my experience travelling the world, people are basically the same wherever you go, just the cuisine and politics change. I am probably not understanding how many people have a good grasp of English. People see advantage in learning another language. I suppose that if the worlds best development environment was only available in Albanian, then we would all be happy to learn Albanian.
At my school, English was mandatory (and Dutch, of course) and I choose German as well. Fun is, I worked for years in Germany and my previous app was localized into German. While coding I sometimes had difficulties writing the correct language in interface messages like MsgBox(). After so many years in Germany I am able to speak it sufficient enough. The hard part of a foreign language is that sometimes (in face to face discussions) the correct word doesn’t come up quick enough.
Many words in German are the same or slightly different from Dutch, coming from the same origin (the ‘Dietsch’ language, hence the word ‘Dutch’). But a whole lot more words are completely different and that makes it sometimes hard, i.e.
Dutch German English
Wagen Wagen Car
Been Bein Leg
Bijna Fast Almost
As extra the German language is using ‘cases’ (I believe that is the correct word) in prepositions depending on the subject and the phrase or predicate. Sometimes very hard, so many rules to memorize.
Germany is our neighbor but the longer I work in Germany the more I am convinced that The Netherlands and Germany have many, many differences and are not so much alike as many think. In that respect The Netherlands looks more like Denmark, in politics, behavior, cuisine and manners or habits.
[quote=100337:@Alexander van der Linden]Dutch German English
Wagen Wagen Car
Been Bein Leg
Bijna Fast Almost[/quote]
While the “Fast” above is also used as an English word with very different meaning, listed right of it.
In the list above, “Fast” could also be written as “Beinahe”, which comes near to the Dutch one.
Not listed right of it, “Fast” = “Schnell”. Sorry for confusing the reader. 
Well,
at least we have the better soccer player. 
[quote=100371:@Torsten Gaidies]Well,
at least we have the better soccer player. :P[/quote]
Ugh.
It is FOOTBALL, not soccer.
To hear people succumb to such an Americanism is dreadful
Whatever,
we have the better player 
I hope, I do not regret this sentence in the next few weeks.
[quote=100373:@Markus Winter]Ugh.
It is FOOTBALL, not soccer.
To hear people succumb to such an Americanism is dreadful [/quote]
Cultural differences within the same language : we all write in English but Football has different meanings. Now do we write in American English, or in British English, or international vehicular English ? Sounds like encodings
[quote=100375:@Torsten Gaidies]Whatever,
we have the better football player [/quote]
Well… This is what the market says: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/world-cup-ronaldo-leads-list-711135
And at this World Cup this is what I saw until now (He redefined The Legend of the Flying Dutchman):
Robin van Persie
Yes,
it was a great match. At this time I don’t have a favourite for this WM.
As for the language question. No one cares about the syntax of the programming language. It could be German, if it could become a relevant programming language, I would not study German to program, but I should learn all the keywords of that language and how to use them. Probably the creators of that language will make English manuals for that, they usually do.
I don’t feel comfortable answering questions in languages that haven’t a written documentation in that language. Sometimes I test people, showing them the page in the docs where they can find more info. If they can’t read the current docs, they are in trouble. They aren’t ready to advance by themselves.