Software and development

The list opens with a linguagem de programação, and the noun inside it is one English cannot match, because Portuguese divides in two what « language » keeps in one. A língua is a language in the ordinary sense, the thing a nation speaks and a dictionary describes — a língua portuguesa, falar três línguas — and, as in English, the muscle in the mouth as well. A linguagem is the other half: not a particular tongue but the use of signs at all, the way somebody speaks, the register a text is written in, as in linguagem corrente, linguagem jurídica, a linguagem do corpo. A programming language belongs to that second half, which is why it can never be uma língua de programação: a machine has no nation and no speakers, it is simply handed a system of signs. English can draw the same line when it must, by reaching for « tongue » or « speech », but the single noun does most of the work and hides the seam. The rule is short: if it can have a native speaker it is uma língua, and otherwise it is uma linguagem.