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"the majority of scientists working today are actually not native English speakers. When you consider the time spent by them on language-learning, the English-l
by beloch 12y ago
"the majority of scientists working today are actually not native English speakers. When you consider the time spent by them on language-learning, the English-language conquest is not more efficient than polyglot science – it is just differently inefficient. "
This is false. If science were still conducted equally in German, Russian, French and English, up and coming scientists in China, Japan, etc. would have to learn four languages to keep up with their field instead of just English. Conversely, assuming such newcomers rise to the forefront of their field, they might choose to publish in their own language, foisting a new language on everyone else.
One aspect of English that the author overlooks completely is how welcoming it is of new words. French, for example, has the "Académie française", which is an institution charged with maintaining the purity of the French language. This means resisting change and controlling the vocabulary in use. There are dictionaries for English, but those who maintain them simply try to keep up with common usage, not control what becomes common usage. If a researcher finds that they need a term that does not exist in English, it's trivial to invent a new word or, more commonly, borrow one from another language.
The author of this article argues that English speaking countries exert undue influence on science because of scientific monolingualism. However, English has been extensively modified to suit those who wield it in print, and an increasing proportion of them are not native speakers of English. English is rapidly becoming the world's language. One could just as easily write an article bemoaning the plight of Anglophones, whose native tongue is no longer something they control!
- TeMPOraL 12y ago> One aspect of English that the author overlooks completely is how welcoming it is of new words. This. It's also one the feature I personally most love in English. In principle, you can invent new words in every language; in practice, not every language culture allows you to do that freely. I like thinking in English because of its flexibility. If I need so, I can e.g. verb a noun on the fly and everyone understands what's going on. Bending the language to better express your thoughts is easier in English than in, say, my native Polish.
- Thrymr 12y ago> "scientists in China, Japan, etc. would have to learn four languages to keep up with their field instead of just English." Absolutely; the combinatorics here are huge. The UN has 6 official languages [0], the EU has 24 [1]. There are ~25 languages in the world with more than 50 million native speakers [2]. Does anyone think that science would be more efficient (or effective) if it had to be continually translated between a similar number of languages? [0] http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/languages.shtml http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/languages.shtml [1] http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/linguistic-diversity/official-languages-eu_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/linguistic-diversity/of... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_numb...
- bad_alloc 12y agoI'm not sure it's that, because German adapts to new concepts easily by simply concatenating old ones. The most popular example is probably "Doppelkupplungsgetriebe", which stands for dual-clutch transmission. This means you can get along with a few primitives but on the other hand you get some obscenely long words. You find a lot of those in the legal sector, like "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" which was the name of an actual law controlling how beef is labeled.
- WildUtah 12y agoGerman -- especially in organic chemistry -- is one of the very last languages that still maintains dominance in the face of English in a major scientific discipline. So if German has some quality similar to English, that could still be part of what makes a language gain dominance in a field.
- ashark 12y agoSome areas of the humanities aren't settled on English as their only language. I gather that Egyptologists find it extremely convenient (bordering on necessary) to be able to read modern French and German, which are the languages of important Egyptology journals and books. After that Arabic wouldn't hurt, and I'd guess Russian would be nice (less certain on that one). That's in addition to the languages of their primary and contemporary secondary sources, mind you, which are very important but not used to write up new research :-) Likewise those studying the history or politics of many other regions are aided by knowing French or German or both, plus local and historical languages obviously. In at least some sub-fields of philosophy I'd expect French, and maybe other languages, to be practically a requirement for keeping up with new work and developments. Many native English-speaking economists and political scientists likely did benefit or could have benefited from being able to read French for Piketty's book, which didn't reach the English language until months later. I don't know what effects, positive or negative, this has on the people who work in those fields.