> "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

> "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...