Just leave it, I think. Some nations have 4 national languages (as Martin
will know), some languages are not national, and adopted children often do
not speak their native (=born) language... I suspect someone already put a
substantial amount of thought into the terminology.
-pd
On 1 Sep 2017, at 09:45 , Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Paul McQuesten <mcquesten at gmail.com>
on Thu, 31 Aug 2017 18:48:12 -0500 writes:
Actually, I do agree with you about Microsoft.
But they have so many users that their terminology should not be
Here are a few more views:
It does appear, however, that what I call 'National Language' is often
referred to as 'Native Language'. And the 'National Language'
I do still feel, however, that claiming 'Natural Language' support in R
sets expectations of new users overly high.
Thank you for spending so much time on such a minor nit.
continuing the nits and gnats :
I think I now understand what you mean. From the little I
understand about English intricacies and with my not
fully developed gut feeling of good English (which I rarely
speak but sometimes appreciate when reading / listening),
I would indeed
prefer 'Native Language'
to 'Natural Language'
Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich
On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 5:45 PM, Duncan Murdoch <
murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
On 31/08/2017 6:37 PM, Paul McQuesten wrote:
Thanks, Duncan. But if it is not inappropriate, I feel empowered to
According to this definition, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Natural_language:
In neuropsychology, linguistics and the philosophy of language, a
natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved
naturally in humans ...
Thus this banner statement may appear over-claiming to a significant
fraction of R users.
It seems that LOCALE is called 'National language' support in other
software systems.
Eg: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/goglobal/default.mspx
I wouldn't take Microsoft as an authority on this (or much of
They really are amazingly incompetent, considering how much money they
And, yes, this is a low priority issue. All of you have better things
do.
R is an extremely powerful and comprehensive software system.
Thank you all for that.
And I would like to clean one gnat from the windshield.
I just wax pedantic at times.
On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 5:13 PM, Duncan Murdoch <
murdoch.duncan at gmail.com
<mailto:murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>> wrote:
On 31/08/2017 5:38 PM, Paul McQuesten wrote:
The R signon banner includes this statement:
Natural language support but running in an English locale
Should that not say 'National' instead of 'Natural'?
Meaning that LOCALE support is enabled, not that the interface
understands
human language?
No, "natural language" refers to human languages, but it doesn't
imply that R understands them. NLS just means that messages may be
presented in (or translated to) other human languages in an
appropriate context.
For example, you can start R on most platforms from the console using
LANGUAGE=de R
and instead of the start message you saw, you'll see
R ist freie Software und kommt OHNE JEGLICHE GARANTIE.
Sie sind eingeladen, es unter bestimmten Bedingungen weiter zu
verbreiten.
Tippen Sie 'license()' or 'licence()' f?r Details dazu.
and so on.
Please ignore this and forgive me if this is an inappropriate
post. I am a
N00B in R.
I don't think it is inappropriate.
Duncan Murdoch