English in computing

English as lingua franca of programming and computer science

The English language is sometimes described as the lingua franca of computing. In comparison to other sciences, where Latin and Greek are often the principal sources of vocabulary, computer science borrows more extensively from English. In the past, due to the technical limitations of early computers, and the lack of international standardization on the Internet, computer users were limited to using English and the Latin alphabet. However, this historical limitation is less present today, due to innovations in internet infrastructure and increases in computer speed. Most software products are localized in numerous languages and the invention of the Unicode character encoding has resolved problems with non Latin alphabets. Some limitations have only been changed recently, such as with domain names, which previously allowed only ASCII characters. English is seen as having this role due to the prominence of the United States and the United Kingdom, both English speaking countries, in the development and popularization of computer systems, computer networks, software and information technology.

Computer Science has an ultimately mathematical foundation which was laid by non English speaking cultures. The first mathematically literate societies in the Ancient Near East recorded methods for solving mathematical problems in steps. The word 'algorithm' comes from the name of a famous medieval Arabic mathematician who contributed to the spread of Hindu Arabic numerals, al Khwārizmī. The first systematic treatment of binary numbers was completed by Leibniz, a German mathematician. Leibniz wrote his treatise on the topic in French, the lingua franca of science at the time, and innovations in what is now called Computer hardware occurred outside of an English tradition, with Pascal inventing the first mechanical calculator, and Leibniz improving it. Interest in building computing machines first emerged in the 19th century, with the coming of the Second Industrial Revolution. The origins of Computing in an English tradition began in this era with Charles Babbage's conceptualization of the Difference and Analytical Engine, George Boole's work on logic, and Herman Hollerith's invention of the tabulating machine for specific use in the 1890 United States census. At the time, Britain enjoyed near complete hegemonic power in the West at the height of the Pax Britannica, and America was experiencing an economic and demographic boom. By the time of the interwar period in the early 20th century, the most important mathematics related to the development of computing were being done in English, which was also beginning to become the new lingua franca of science.

The computing terminology of many languages borrows from English. Some language communities actively resist this trend, and in other cases English is used extensively and more directly. This section gives some examples of the use of English loans in other languages and mentions any notable differences.

The Faroese language has a sparse scientific vocabulary based on the language itself. Many Faroese scientific words are borrowed and/or modified versions of especially Nordic and English equivalents. The vocabulary is constantly evolving and thus new words often die out, and only a few survive and become widely used. Examples of successful words include e. g. "telda" (computer), "kurla" (at sign) and "ambætari" (server).

The Icelandic language has its own vocabulary of scientific terms. Still, English loans exist, and are mostly used in casual conversation, whereas the Icelandic words might be longer or not as widespread.

Early computer software and hardware had very little support for character sets other than the Latin alphabet. As a result, it was difficult or impossible to represent languages based on other scripts. The ASCII character encoding, created in the 1960s, usually only supported 128 different characters in a 7 bit format. With the use of additional software it was possible to provide support for some languages, for instance those based on the Cyrillic alphabet. However, complex script and logographic languages like Chinese or Japanese need more characters than the 256 limit imposed by 8 bit character encodings. Some computers created in the former USSR had native support for the Cyrillic alphabet. The widespread adoption of Unicode, and UTF 8 on the web, resolved most of these historical limitations. ASCII remains the de facto standard for command interpreters, programming languages and text based communication protocols, but it is slowly dying out. Mojibake – Text presented as "unreadable" when software fails due to character encoding issues.

Many personal computers have a BIOS chip, displaying text in English during boot time.

Keyboard shortcuts are usually defined in terms of English keywords such as CTRL+F for find.

English is the largest language on the World Wide Web, with 27% of internet users.

Web user percentages usually focus on raw comparisons of the first language of those who access the web. Just as important is a consideration of second and foreign language users; i. e., the first language of a user does not necessarily reflect which language he or she regularly employs when using the web.

English language users appear to be a plurality of web users, consistently cited as around one third of the overall (near one billion). This reflects the relative affluence of English speaking countries and high Internet penetration rates in them. This lead may be eroding due mainly to a rapid increase of Chinese users. First language users among other relatively affluent countries appear generally stable, the two largest being German and Japanese, which each have between 5% and 10% of the overall share.

One widely quoted figure for the amount of web content in English is 80%. Other sources show figures five to fifteen points lower, though still well over 50%. There are two notable facts about these percentages:

The English web content is greater than the number of first language English users by as much as 2 to 1. Given the enormous lead it already enjoys and its increasing use as a lingua franca in other spheres, English web content may continue to dominate even as English first language Internet users decline. This is a classic positive feedback loop: new Internet users find it helpful to learn English and employ it online, thus reinforcing the language's prestige and forcing subsequent new users to learn English as well. Certain other factors (some predating the medium's appearance) have propelled English into a majority web content position. Most notable in this regard is the tendency for researchers and professionals to publish in English to ensure maximum exposure. The largest database of medical bibliographical information, for example, shows English was the majority language choice for the past forty years and its share has continually increased over the same period. The fact that non Anglophones regularly publish in English only reinforces the language's dominance. English has a rich technical vocabulary (largely because native and non native speakers alike use it to communicate technical ideas) and many IT and technical professionals use English regardless of country of origin (Linus Torvalds, for instance, comments his code in English, despite being from Finland and having Swedish as his first language).