Steve Simms

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Languages

The following is a list of languages with which I have some familiarity. Some of the languages I can speak, some I can't, some I used to be able to speak. I've also gotten to see bits and pieces of many more languages during my days as an undergraduate linguistics major, but I won't give those here.

I've also listed the computer languages with which I'm familiar, although I certainly can't "speak" them (or, if I can, I refuse to admit it!).

Living Languages

  • English: My native language. I used to speak a fairly strong dialect of Newfoundland English, but since going to Dartmouth I've learned to suppress it in order to be understood by others (Newfoundland English + a tendency to mumble + speaking quickly was not a good combination in terms of communication). Linguistically, it's fairly similar except for that minor detail of vowels.

  • French: My almost native language. There aren't a lot of French speakers in Newfoundland (certainly not in Corner Brook, although they're much more common in the Port-au-Port peninsula, and there's St. Pierre-Micquelon just south of Newfoundland), but I've been learning French in an immersion environment since kindergarten. I'm bilingual in the language depending on your definition of bilingual, although at this point I'm somewhat rusty since I haven't had much opportunity to speak it since my freshman year.

  • German: I took two terms of German during my freshman year, so at this point I can't speak very much, but if I were in Germany I would be able to pick it up fairly quickly. It was my first experience with case languages, which was good considering I learned Greek next.

  • Urdu: I actually don't speak this language at all, other than a couple hundred words, but I took a Field Methods course where Urdu was the language we studied. It's a neat language.

Dead (or mostly dead) Languages

  • Greek: Greek isn't a dead language, but the dialects I've studied (Classical/Attic and Koine) are quite dead. Both Greek and the Greeks are fascinating to study, and I might actually have become a Classics major had I started earlier.

  • Hebrew: I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take an Old Testament Hebrew course at the same time as a New Testament Greek course (my senior spring). Otherwise, I probably wouldn't know any Hebrew at all. My last term at Dartmouth was actually the first term that this Hebrew course was being offered -- otherwise, the only Hebrew taught at Dartmouth (as of when I graduated) was modern Hebrew, and I'd had no interest in participating in any more language drills.

  • Latin: This language rounded off my "old school" education, and showed me that the Romans were very good at imitating the Greeks. I'd like to do some further study on how the Romans and the Greeks interacted, particularly since their languages and cultures appear to be so related.

Computer Languages

  • BASIC and Visual BASIC: Back in the Commodore 64 days, this is the language that got me interested in computer programming. Later, when such innovations as graphical user interfaces became more common (Macs were essentially unheard of in Newfoundland), I graduated to Visual BASIC (with some time beforehand spent with QBASIC).

  • C++: I don't know this language very well yet, although I can read it fairly well. I'm working at learning it, although getting involved with a project or starting my own has been difficult (I learn languages best by doing things with them rather than studying books).

  • Java: I learned this language my sophomore spring when I took Introductory Computer Science. It's my second-favorite language right now, and may eventually become my favorite. (I'm currently much more familiar with Perl).

  • JavaScript: This is another language that I'm in the process of learning. A lot of really nasty things are done with JavaScript in terms of usability, but it has the potential to do some very useful things as well, based on what I've read of the specifications so far. I recently came across a clock program that I'll include here once I clean up the code. It's incredibly neat, if useless, but is one of the most artistic uses of JavaScript that I've ever seen.

  • Lisp (Scheme): My third computer science course used Scheme, a variant on Lisp, to prove a point, as far as I can tell, that one does not need to use a commonly-used language in order to teach proper programming technique. Lisp-lovers and Emacs programmers aside, I can't imagine anyone using this language for a large project. If you think otherwise, however, and have some examples, I would love to hear about them.

  • Perl: This is my favorite language, and the one with which I am currently the most familiar. Perl is probably the most flexible language I've ever seen, although that means that in order to make code readable by others, you have to expend more effort.

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If you think of his professional web sites as his office and workplace, this is where he hangs out in the evenings, chats about what happened during the day, and explores some hobbies.

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