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by sampo 4670 days ago
When I learned Basic as a kid (8–9 years old I think), I just learned what the reserved words (rem, print, goto, gosub, return, if then else, etc.) did in the context of my programs: 'goto' literally meant "jump to this line" etc.

It was somewhat later that I realized that my 'goto' is actually derived from English words 'go' and 'to'.

So if goes like this:

- 8 yrs old: learn 'while' in the context of Basic

- 10 yrs old: learn 'while' in the context of English classes at school

- 14(?) yrs old: suddenly realize if you remove the space from then English "go to", it becomes the Basic 'goto', and a-ha, maybe that is not a coincidence.

I actually just right now realized what the 'wend' in the while...wend loop is made of (in the English sense). Hah.