"Confusing"

[Valentino Giudice]

The INI website claims:

> Not only does this eliminate the hurt caused by those connotations, it also improves understanding, particularly for people who are reading in a second language, where those idioms may be confusing.

This is a very strong claim, which I don't see any reason to believe.

I know it doesn't mean much but, because English is my second language, I will provide my prospective.

If one reads "blacklist", "whitelist" or similar terms, they are already probably reading something written in English. One of the hardest aspects of English (which, contrary to what I noticed many monolinguals think, is not a very hard language) is the lack of relationship between spelling and pronunciation.

Having to learn a few new technical terms isn't that difficult. If anything, words are less confusing precisely when English is a second language. This is part of why programming languages derived from natural languages other than English are rare: they are really not needed.

Words do not have (or have less of) an intuitive meaning for those that do not speak English as a first language. "Denylist" is in no way easier or less confusing than "blocklist". A change in terminology however may be confusing. The reccomendation to replace terminology actually works against the goal of making things clearer, especially for non-native speakers.

So, here is my question.

Is the implication that non-native speakers would be confused by words such as "blocklist" based on actual confusion, which has actually happened (even if just as an anecdote), or is it pure speculation? In case it is pure speculation, was such speculation from a native English speaker (or one who effectively speaks English as fluently as one)?

[Elisabeth Green]

Use this example instead?:

"allowed" is an array of objects passed to it by any "allow" function; "denied" is an array of objects passed to it by any "deny" function

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