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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.
There is a good reason why Chemistry majors have to learn German. Basically, it remains (well, it did back in 2000) the main research language for Chemistry (though not bio-chem, which was English ).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
....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.........
We need a metric language. Those stupid English users and their imperial language is so last year.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Because of all the liberal idiots that just LOVE illegal immigration, pretty soon English won't even be the dominant language spoken in the United States.
So currently about 80% of households speak English as their dominant language at home, as opposed to 13% of those who speak Spanish as their dominant language at home. Other than ignorance, I'm not sure how you have come to the conclusion that English won't be the dominant language in the United States for the foreseeable future.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The real challenge facing Chinese as a dominant research language is the deeply ingrained and well-known cheating culture that pervades China's academic system, tracing its origins back centuries to the highly competitive Imperial Civil Service exams.
Since publication is the modern day badge of success in academia, a much greater proportion of Chinese research papers are rife with shortcuts, bad data, poor research design, and even outright fraud when compared to their peers in Western Universities, Japan, etc.
Until Chinese Universities and Journals clean up their act regarding reproducibility and peer review, their research will always be considered less credible and lack in influence despite its sheer volume.
Plenty of people who understand how language actually works snicker at your snickering.
I wouldn't be surprised if you were to look at historical trends and see the rate of English increasing. People tend to forget that the U.S. had huge waves of immigration throughout its history and that it's still not uncommon for many people today to have grandparents who grew up speaking Italian, German, Polish, Norwegian, etc. at home instead of English.
The people who are in houses speaking Spanish today will have grandchildren that won't speak a word of it.
They were just sticking their thumb in the frog's eye.
The french are really butthurt that frogish is now a backwater language.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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'
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.
Not in places like San Diego or El Paso.
We run the risk of being culturally balkanized. TV helps, but schools need to be English only.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is seeming less likely. The attempt to end birthright citizenship by the current administration if it were to go through would have a significant impact on this. I don't have anything against Spanish myself other than the fact that it is more suited to philosophy and theology than science imo but I'm not sure anymore that current demographic trends are going to continue.
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Headline: "English Has the Scientific Edge -- For Now"
Synopsis: "But, while English is highly unlikely to be dethroned"
So for now and probably always?
Not like how Greek, Arabic, and Latin were replaced in their times as the language of science and mathematics.
I always snicker when I hear of English being the lingua franca of anything. If I'm not mistaken, 'lingua franca' means literally 'French language' and stems from the days when French was the international language.
Some day, English may be the lingua franca of France.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Post colonialism, immigration is what kept English dominant in the first place. You take people from other countries in, show them what a real civilization looks like, and some of them they take that, and English, back to their homelands. The kids of the ones that stay become inadvertent English teachers to whoever else arrives. Only the knee-jerk primitives among us fail to realize that you have to be culturally evangelical to avoid fading away... if you just shut yourself up in your hill fort people just forget about you and move on without you.
Unfortunately we are rapidly approaching the point at which we won't have a real civilization to show off.
Someone had to do it.
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.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
To native speakers, I mean. I have noticed that (educated) foreigners who learnt English as a second language all too often seem to be able to write better English than native speakers. Learning English natively will give you an edge if you aspire to become a horse racing commentator for the BBC. For writing up research papers (or books) on physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, etc. not so much.
For scientific papers? Really? If you want to understand the complete opposite of what they claim, maybe.
I always snicker when I hear of English being the lingua franca of anything. If I'm not mistaken, 'lingua franca' means literally 'French language' and stems from the days when French was the international language.
I don't like using French words. They fatigue me.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I don't care what they speak, as long as the list includes English.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It doesn't mean "French". It means as universally understood as French used to be. Don't take idioms literally.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Who were the Franks? Anyone west of Rome/Italy is a Frank. It is like that famous cartoon of New Yorker's view of America. There is Hudson, New Jersey ... and San Francisco somewhere over there.
It means a link language, language of communications between the unwashed masses, while the high society of priests were using Latin.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As a native English speaker living in a foreign speaking country, I would absolutely primarily speak English at home with my children. I don't yet have children, so I mostly speak the native language at home in order to hone my skills, however that will change when I have kids. Being immersed in the local lingo, they'll have no problem learning it - no doubt to a level far higher than my own! But using English at home will give them the rare opportunity to simultaneously learn a second language to native proficiency.
Over here, the locals frequently complement me on my local language skills, however it's sad to see that I all too frequently see people in English speaking countries criticising the English of immigrants who speak English far better than I speak my own second language. It's not just ignorant, it's arrogant.
So let me get this straight: you stole territory from another country, colonized their land, and somehow you're still mad that people from the area don't want to speak the language you forced upon them?
Let's do the opposite. Russia and China nuke the US down. Now your territory is divided between the two. You're a Chinese citizen now. As a law-abiding citizen I EXPECT YOU to speak chinese at all times.
Why does it even matter if English isn't the dominant language anyway? It's not like all the English speakers here are natives anyway. And not even all of the original 13 colonies were English speaking or founded by the English. They spoke Spanish in Southwest before English speakers showed up. Texas used to be a part of Mexico until the upstart gringos got pissed that they couldn't own slaves. The only American "culture" we have is what we've stolen and modified from other countries. If English declines in usage over time, it's no big deal.
And what's wrong with that? San Diego was originally founded by the Spanish conquistidors and later was a part of Mexico. El Paso used to be a city that straddled the border and the citizens freely walked back and forth until the border patrol beefed up its presence.
What is so special about American culture anway? And why is a homogenous culture even remotely important?
Virtually everyone in America has ancestors that came from somewhere else, and a very large number of US citizens were born in different cities or states than they were born in. If you aren't native American you really shouldn't be griping about other cultures showing up uninvited.
America was a backwards country for a very long time. It wasn't until WWI that the US was really taken seriously on the world stage. Muc of the early immigration came from countries that were just as civilized as the US, the immigrants were showing up because their home country had famines, economic slump, or they were from a group discriminated against at home. Outside of former British colonies, It wasn't until the economic boom in the US in the twentieth century that English become more popular.
...and that it's still not uncommon for many people today to have grandparents who grew up speaking Italian, German, Polish, Norwegian, etc. at home instead of English.
/me waves
My grandfather (born in the early 20th century) learned Yiddish from his parents at home, learned French from the rest of the neighborhood, and didn't learn English until he started school.
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.
The vast majority of the time, the grandchildren of immigrants are only fluent in English. Even without an "English only at home" rule. They might be able to converse a bit in another language, similar to someone who learned that language in high school.
Lingua Franca does not mean "French". It originally was used to refer to a pidjin language in common use in the eastern Mediterranean area from 11th century, which probably was more Italian based than French.
Just because translations exist doesn't mean English is losing its edge. Virtually all top journals in pure sciences require publication in English. The one exception I've seen is French. Quite a few top math journals still allow French.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
I took four years of Latin in high school, and I can tell you I learned more about the English language in Latin class, than I ever did in English class.
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
Think about having English as your first language and maintaining code written in Chinese.
Go well
You don't need to wait 200 years. It is happening now in parts of London. But it is not limited to Chinese and English.
The reality is English's big advantage is it can easily adopt words from other languages, and the concepts that go with them. Many other languages cannot adopt words form other languages due to a variety of restrictive rules, and therefore lack the ability to benefit from access to ideas developed in other cultures.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Then you have drunk too much Trump Kool-ade.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Probably best to shoot them anyway, just to be on the safe side.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> its advantages are eroding due to an increasingly healthy research environment in China
I have not heard stupider shit in ages.
Kaveh Waddell, you are an imbecile and should consider self-imposed vow of silence.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And here's another thing - they all used plain ol' ascii. None of that poncy unicode shit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Mercedes Benz, the Cadillac of cars.
(Red Wriggler, the Cadillac of worms)
Sure. At a point where there wasn't any television, movies, radio, printing presses, recorded music and ... I'm sure I'm missing something else but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."