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:Liberal idiots

[El Cubano]

as opposed to 13% of those who speak Spanish as their dominant language at home.

Not only that. I worked with a guy whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico in the 1950s or 1960s. He went into the Army and after he was dinged on a fitrep for his thick accent being a barrier to effective communication with other soldiers, he decided that his kids weren't going to go through that. He instituted a strict English-only policy at home and as a consequence, my co-worker (who had a very Latino name) speaks only English (and that with a Texas accent).

Not every immigrant family has an English-only policy at home, but I have interacted with enough people who grew up with that to conclude that it is not all that uncommon. Even the homes where there is not an explicit English-only policy, the kids frequently don't master their parents' native language, perhaps gaining only limited conversational ability. Face it, with television, radio, other media, their friends at school, etc. all speaking English there is usually only a very weak incentive (from the point of a child) to learn another language. Their kids, in turn, will almost certainly not speak the grandparents' native language.

What I find really interesting is the places like New York, San Antonio, Miami, etc., where there are significant ethnic populations and neighborhoods. You can typically walk around and see signage and hear people speaking where words of the immigrant community's language are interspersed among English. From what I have observed children who grow up in those sorts of neighborhoods, whether their parents are immigrants or natives, tend to develop a sort of pidgin that mixes English with the popular ethnic words used in shops, restaurants, etc.

I suspect that if I had not ended up in IT I would have become a linguist or etymologist.

One thing I wish I would have known earlier

[damn_registrars]

Decades ago when I was in middle school I had to select a second language to study. That time happened to be another one of those periods when many of the loudest voices in the US were telling us we all needed to learn Spanish ASAP to prepare to communicate with all the people living (or yet to be born) in Mexico and South America (Brazil be damned, of course). So I followed that reasoning and suffered through 3 years of Spanish by the time I was done with high school.

Yet even then I had an inclination towards science. Now many years past college, I repeatedly realize that the language I should have taken is indeed German. While I have never met someone at a conference who speaks German but not English, I almost never meet anyone at a conference who speaks any significant degree of Spanish. In my field the top languages after English are almost certainly German, Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, and Dutch (in that order). I meet more people speaking Norwegian than I meet speaking Spanish.

Sure, Spanish is useful for many people, but I could have instead studied a language of use to me back then.

Here's how you get Americans to pay for science

[rsilvergun]

it worked for NASA. The moon landing was basically a big, multi-billion dollar middle finger to Russia. All we gotta do to restore the last 40 years of cuts to science & education is convince the ones doing the cutting that they're gonna all end up speaking Mandarin and watch the money flow in.