4 ms·
I like the French language; I was once fluent (when I was 6). So when I was sent on a course to do with computers in Paris, I said that my French was up to it.
by denton-scratch 4y ago
I like the French language; I was once fluent (when I was 6).
So when I was sent on a course to do with computers in Paris, I said that my French was up to it. Wrong! My presence on the course was seriously disruptive, because French technical jargon (which I didn't learn at age 6) is unrecognisable to people who haven't learned that jargon in France (nobody else uses it).
- slily 4y agoHow is that different from any other language? For instance, Chinese/Eastern medical jargon is objectively more readable than Western terms (unless you are fluent in Greek and Latin), but that doesn't mean you'll be able to understand them without some prior exposure. French is also spoken outside of France.
- denton-scratch 4y agoI apologise; I routinely discount anything that is in a language that I can't read, and isn't available in translation, which means an awful lot of stuff from the far-east. I assumed doctors everywhere had built an informal consensus to use English, with terminology derived from classical greek; rather as pilots and air-traffic controllers all use English.
- eru 4y agoIf anything, medical people use Latin as their universal language. At least that used to be the case. In Germany medical students are still required to learn (at least some) Latin.