Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker
usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input
from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often
uses translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to
them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are
interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to
travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'.
These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as
reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the
Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is
heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry on
Commonwealth Hackish
reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from
U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report
that they often use a mixture of English and their native
languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop
idioms in their English usage that are influenced by their
native-language styles. Some of these are reported here.
On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and
vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian
hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll)
and `deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian `scorrere'
and `cancellare'. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been
seen conjugated in Swedish. In German, many Unix terms in English
are casually declined as if they were German verbs - thus:
mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept;
fork/forken/geforkt; core dump/core-dumpen, core-gedumpt. And
Spanish-speaking hackers use `linkar' (to link), `debugear' (to
debug), and `lockear' (to lock).
European hackers report that this happens partly because the
English terms make finer distinctions than are available in their
native vocabularies, and partly because deliberate
language-crossing makes for amusing wordplay.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where
they are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.
Node:Lamer-speak, Next:Pronunciation Guide,
Previous:International Style, Up:Top