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.

Comments

Re:Modern American English

[Oswald McWeany]

Modern American English is a combination of English and many other languages (Spanish, French, German and others)
In many ways, it's a sort of global language that continually evolves.

You didn't need to specify "American" there as that is true for all varieties of mainstream English. Of course, what's even more fun is when you consider that almost half of English words have a French-connection. "French" was originally a pidgin of Germanic languages and Latin. (the Franks being a German tribe settling in an area which had been speaking Latin because of the Roman rule for centuries). German is a mishmash of various regional variants that came to form one language and has borrowed from it's neighbours.

English has also taken on words from India, Turkey, Native Americans, and more. So we speak a put-together language that took it's inspiration from other languages that were put-together from other combinations.

200 years from now I bet Chinese and English will be influencing each other heavily with English words being adopted into Mandarin and Mandarin words being adopted into English. Language is a beautiful messed up thing.