I pronounce some symbols when I’m programming.

With the exception of the parentheses, number row symbols can each be pronounced reasonably in one syllable:

!: bang
@: at
#: hash
$: cash
%: cent
^: hat
&: and
*: star

I think this is something some people will find inherently interesting and useful¹, whereas other people will ask, “what’s the point?” I think this is probably due to a legitimate difference in the brains of the two groups: I’ve long thought some people rely more on pronunciation when they read than others.

I recently came across some backup for this in Alan Watts’ Tao: The Watercourse Way. In the book, he writes that written Chinese, in contrast to other languages like English and Japanese, is an inherently visual language, whereas with other languages, you have to know how to pronounce to words in order to read the written language. It is possible to learn the meanings of the ideographs, and the grammar for how to combine them, without ever knowing how the symbols could be pronounced. This allows a greater variety of dialects to be united under the umbrella of “Chinese” than English could handle: people can be pronouncing things totally differently, but still understand one another, at least in writing.

This is fascinating to me, because it confirms that people use internal pronunciation to different degrees when reading. I use it more than other people, even other English speakers I suspect, hence calling ‘$’ “cash” is a boon to me. I can speak the symbols internally more quickly while programming if they are one syllable. For others, they read symbols like ‘!’ and ‘@’ the way I read symbols like ‘(‘, that is, without pronouncing them (in their head). Their eyes just absorb the meaning visually.

If this difference between people is real, it may explain my utter lack of interest when it comes to learning another (regular, non-programming) language, as well as my interest in learning English vocabulary and etymology: my thoughts are inextricably linked to the language I use for speaking and thinking. This may be less true for other people. This may also explain why I find phrases like “the sum of the squares is equal to the square of the sums” helpful, but nobody else I know seems to, and they would rather just see the formula (I can’t say I wouldn’t prefer the formula either).

Here’s a story that supports the idea that this is a real way people’s minds differ: In Richard Feynman’s Fun to Imagine documentary, he describes how he discovers that he could read while counting in his head, but he couldn’t speak to anyone while counting, because his mind’s ear was already in use. He was saying to himself, in his head, “one… two… three…”. However, Feynman’s colleague John Tukey found it mind-boggling that Feynman had any trouble at all speaking while counting, and equally mind-boggling that he could read while counting. As it turns out, Tukey would count differently: he counted by visualizing numerals in his mind’s eye, not by speaking numbers in his mind’s ear. Myself, I cannot speak while counting, because I count like Feynman — I speak the numbers to myself in my head — but I also must rely more on my mind’s ear than Feynman for reading, because I can’t read while counting either!

Especially when coding ↩

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