The Coq mailing list

[Andrew Appel <appel AT princeton.edu>]

And actually, Santiago's post made me understand more clearly why the word "octet" is necessary.

It's not just that "byte" carries uncomfortable connotations in French (though that is true);

it's also that "bit" and "byte" would be pronounced exactly the same in French, causing needless ambiguity.

Although, of course, the French language routinely solves that kind of problem by making one of the words masculine and the other word feminine, so that the definite or indefinite article will resolve the ambiguity.  However, "bit" (binary digit) is masculine, and "bite" (slang for penis) is feminine, so that doesn't leave room for "byte" . . .

---

From: "Sam Kuper" <sampablokuper AT posteo.net>
To: "coq-club" <coq-club AT inria.fr>
Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2021 10:04:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Coq-Club] Why is the Coq logo made to look like a penis?

On Mon, Apr 05, 2021 at 08:55:47PM +0200, Santiago Bautista wrote:
> I would like to add to Andrew's message that "bit" when read out-loud
> is enough to make french people uncomfortable.
> In addition, for the strings of characters we sometimes use in french
> the word "string", which also has another meaning in french.
>
> In one of the very first Computer Science classes I attended, when the
> teacher started discussing how many bits there were in a string,
> all the class was either uncomfortable, laughing, or both.

To aid comprehension for readers unfamiliar with those particular French
words (including me - my French lessons at school and university did not
cover them, so I had to look them up in order to understand the points
above):

- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bite#French (slang for penis)

- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/string#French (means g-string or thong)

--
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
/\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.