Interesting point--on the other hand, when I think of heiroglyphics, I think of something like APL or Commodore 64 Basic (such as I remember of it, I remember it had a lot of non-ASCII hoopajoos in it).

I started learning Perl some time ago, and it's gradually been pushing me farther away from Windows, further into Linux land. As a result, only now am I learning the *real* basics--proper shell commands, etc. (I can hardly stand to use the old, tired cmd.exe DOS prompt anymore--many of you probably know the feeling.)

The further I go into the original Perl enviroment, the more similarities I see in grammar and function--sort of like the day I read a passage in German out loud, and realized, if you slurred the words a bit, it sounded just like King James English.

But the more I thought about the connection of Perl as a programming language to Perl as an actual form of communication, the more parallels I began to see. Some I didn't mention in the opening topic:

• Perl poetry, of course.
• Idioms.
• Pronouns ($_, @_) = it, them.
• Indirect objects.
• Grammar rules (use strict;)
• Professors of the language (use diagnostics;)
• Power through conciseness @lines = <FILE>;
• Arguments over proper grammar, because there's more than one way to say it.

On the other hand, Perl has institutions that human languages don't: CPAN, yes, but the language as a whole has been improving and becoming more powerful each 'generation'--as opposed to spoken language, which, to paraphrase the Camel book, just changes so it can 'sit around being different'.