Spelling Mistakes that Can't Be Fixed

Thursday, 15 July 2010

In all programming languages, the basic commands are always in English. Any library that is distributed internationally (for instance, the windows libraries which allow programs to create text boxes, buttons, windows, menus, etc.), has all its functions written in English.

So every programmer in the world, has to use English commands whether or not they actually know any English. Many companies around the world even enforce rules that their programmers should write their own functions with English names and comments. Though this is not always the case.

Well, when you're programming, anyway.

But for any large international company, they have no choice but to have this rule. Therefore, you'll have Korean programmers in Korea writing code with English comments, English function names, English variable names, etc.

For the uninitiated, a "variable" is, simply a value which can change, and this value must be given a name. For instance: BillGatesAge = 10. This will change on his 11th birthday, and so on. This is similar to a variable in mathematics.

So, if a Chinese programmer is writing a program, that says "hello" in Chinese, they would have to write something like this (C#):
Console.WriteLine("你好");
OR in C
printf("你好");

There probably will come a time, where one can choose a programming language, and a symbol language. But this time has not come, so everyone must use English. Whiteness - the gift that just keeps giving.

And because most native English speakers can't seem to be able to spell anymore, and because a lot of things are written by non-English speakers, there is a high chance that somewhere, I library name, or a command will be misspelt, and used by millions around the world before it has a chance to be fixed. At which point it cannot be fixed. Well, not completely.

Of course! A dictionary!

In the Microsoft dot Net libraries, there is a list of values called Keys. This gives a name to each key. On Korean keyboards, there is a key which switches between Hangeul (Korean writing) and Latin (English writing). In the enumeration, this key is called both HangulMode and HanguelMode. This is because the "correct" English spelling of the word is "Hangul", but when writing Korean in Latin, it should be written as "Hanguel". I personally always go with "Hangeul".

Anyhow, from the looks of it, when that was originally written, it must have been a Korean, or at least someone that knew a bit of Korean, who named it "HanguelMode", which is actually a misspelling of "HangeulMode". Later on, after it has been released, someone must have said "Hey! Wayddaminute! It should be 'HangulMode'", and, because it was already in use, they just added the extra name. So it's got two names, and neither of them is the official - revised - Korean spelling of Hangeul. In Hangeul, Hangeul is spelt: 한글. ㅎ=h, ㅏ=a, ㄴ=n, ㄱ=g, ㅡ=eu, ㄹ=l or r.

And to add insult to insult (no injury here, move along!), the same enumeration (list of values) has the value for the key which is used to accept an IME input named "IMEAceept". Yes, I can aceept that, but it is not a very easy thing to aceept. Every single time I ever need to know that the accept IME key has been pressed, I have to aceept the fact that it is spelt incorrectly. Likewise, this has been fixed at a later date, so I actually see two available names for that key: IMEAceept, IMEAccept. Luckily, that is not the alphabetical order, so auto-complete will usually get the one spelt correctly. There must be quite a lot of code out there using this name, so Microsoft can't just remove the misspelling. It will stay there for a very long time.

The misspellings will be deprecated eventually, I'm sure.