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Re:How Lisp macros differ from static code-generation and me... by jerf on Wednesday January 26, 2011 @01:01PM (#2144162)
Hmm, I don't know about in general, but in English we have the double-quote when being used to refer to the statement itself. For example, I can talk about the use of "for example" by quoting it like that. So (written) English can embed English in a reasonably standard format. Very like the Lisp quote operator, no? The name is not coincidence.

However, we have no useful English operators to take the quoted words and change them into something else meaningfully. Though a non-English set can be argued to exist: http://creativeservices.iu.edu/resources/guide/marks.shtml If those were English themselves that would arguably complete the loop, but I would consider that stretching the point; these were explicitly invented to avoid the use of English and also translate to any other character-based language.

Re:How Lisp macros differ from static code-generation and me... by pangram on Wednesday January 26, 2011 @01:31PM (#2144351)
I can't think of a natural language equivalent for the comma operator, other than (maybe) incredibly awkward and confusing uses of parenthetical statements