Slashdot Mirror
English Has the Scientific Edge -- For Now (axios.com)
For centuries, science was a multilingual affair, powered by French, German, English and other tongues. But since the early 1970s, English has become the undisputed lingua franca of scientific papers, conferences, and discourse. From a report: English-speaking countries now have a huge leg up in technical research, including the current rages -- artificial intelligence and quantum computing. But, while English is highly unlikely to be dethroned, its advantages are eroding due to an increasingly healthy research environment in China, the fast transmission of research papers across the internet, and AI-aided translation technology that is shrinking the language barrier. [...] The dominance of English gives native speakers a huge advantage, says Michael Gordin, a Princeton professor who specializes in the role of language in technological advance.
....you're hearing less and less English spoken in the US these days.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There is never a bad time to mock the french.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
From the Summary: >English has become the undisputed lingua franca
I wonder if they know what that means... or if they were going for that on purpose.
I wonder if the author also confuses words like pizza and lasagna as being English words.
That's because pizza and lasagna are English words. Just like every word in this sentence, comprende? The English invented language. The English had Shakespeare and Socrates. Homer and Hemingway. If you go back and look at pictures of London from a million years ago, they had steam engines and skyscrapers, while the rest of the world was living in mud huts and grunting.
The English had computers in 1837. At that time America didn't even have roads and people fought over such primitive things like cattle or religion. Since we're talking about science, you know that Darwin guy that invented atheism? He was English.