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In what languages are papers published?

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
22 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
I'm With Stupid
Senior Member
Vietnam
Joined 4175 days ago

165 posts - 349 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Vietnamese

 
 Message 17 of 22
19 September 2013 at 8:17pm | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
I'm With Stupid wrote:

My experience is that if people can get by in English in their professional life and personal life (i.e. hanging out with other international students) then they won't learn the local language.


The India's example proves the contrary. English is the language of education, science, business,
but it's not the language of art and culture, the percentage of movies shot in English is < 1 %,
all you get are movies in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Punjabi, Assamese, Marathi...

English is used informally only if there is no common Indian language people communicating can understand.
English-medium schools may be popular but no Indian speaks with their partner or children in English.

Sociolinguistically:

H (acrolect): English
M (mesolect): Hindi, local language (in Tamil Nadu, English is preferred to Hindi)
L (basilect): local language (Tamil in Tamil Nadu, Malayalam in Kerala, Hindi in the Hindi belt, Punjabi in Pujab, Marathi in Maharashtra...)

I don't understand what you're getting at. I'm talking about expats in other countries. I live in Vietnam, and with the exception of Vietnamese Americans, I only know a single expat who can speak Vietnamese to a conversational level. They all work in English, their accommodation has English-speaking office staff, the banks have English speaking staff and forms to fill in. You can live quite comfortably here without knowing any Vietnamese beyond a few useful phrases. As a result, the vast majority never learn the language. And this is in a country where most people don't have very good English, or indeed none at all.

So imagine what it's like in the Netherlands, where international students are studying in English, most of their friends are other international students, and even all of the local people speak English to a near-native level of fluency. I can't imagine anyone but those really interested in language learning are going to make the effort to learn the language.
4 persons have voted this message useful



Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4255 days ago

544 posts - 1141 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 18 of 22
19 September 2013 at 8:31pm | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
Henkkles wrote:
German is the lingua franca of linguistic studies.


Really are the top linguistics journals published in English or German?

They were, at least to my knowledge. English has only recently become bigger, I think.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5011 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 19 of 22
19 September 2013 at 10:15pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
And we have still got a lot of original Czech medical textbooks, some of which are better than the English ones (but most are average or worse of course) and the publishers still find it worth the trouble to translate
some books. Because of unexpected stupidity of many students of course.

Many classmates of mine are unable to use the original version despite the advantages. For example, I got a beautiful and awesomely writen biochemistry textbook today in original for 2/3 of the price of Czech translation. Why do people not learn? It's not that hard and it pays off a thousand times.


It's not necessarily stupidity. Maybe some Czech citizens simply expect that if they enrol for a university course in their own country, materials will be available in the national language.


When most people can't use any foreign language much despite half of them seriously considering moving away after university, it is stupidity. When they expect everything to be available in their native language despite knowing it is such a small one and despite complaining about some of the Czech textbooks, it is stupidity. Nothing else.
2 persons have voted this message useful



beano
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4624 days ago

1049 posts - 2152 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

 
 Message 20 of 22
22 September 2013 at 2:01pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
beano wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
And we have still got a lot of original Czech medical
textbooks, some of which are better than the English ones (but most are average or worse of course) and the
publishers still find it worth the trouble to translate
some books. Because of unexpected stupidity of many students of course.

Many classmates of mine are unable to use the original version despite the advantages. For example, I got a
beautiful and awesomely writen biochemistry textbook today in original for 2/3 of the price of Czech
translation. Why do people not learn? It's not that hard and it pays off a thousand times.


It's not necessarily stupidity. Maybe some Czech citizens simply expect that if they enrol for a university
course in their own country, materials will be available in the national language.


When most people can't use any foreign language much despite half of them seriously considering moving
away after university, it is stupidity. When they expect everything to be available in their native language
despite knowing it is such a small one and despite complaining about some of the Czech textbooks, it is
stupidity. Nothing else.


But not everyone is interested in languages and, besides, most people spend their whole lives resident in
their country of birth. If you worked as a dentist in, say, Brno, you wouldn't need to have a great command of
any other language than Czech.

Perhaps there just isn't a culture of foreign language learning in the Czech Republic (border regions
excepted). The Empire has been gone close on 100 years, Russian was hated and swiftly abandoned
following the collapse of communism. I'm sure many young people are now starting to embrace English but it
will take a long time to filter through to the general population.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5011 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 21 of 22
23 September 2013 at 2:06am | IP Logged 
If you study to become a dentist, it is different because dentists actually get paid real money and can open their own practice after just a few years. But when you study general medicine (which leads to all the other specialisations), everyone knows the chances to have a good salary and work conditions are very slim here, at least for the first 5-10 years. And even later it is poverty in comparison with better quality countries and it doesn't actually reflect all the investments people and their families had to put in the education. It seems that one third of every year absolvents goes abroad these days. At least 2/3 of the students consider it as an option worth taking seriously. Can you see any place left for just "not being interested in languages"? Noone cares what you are interested in when you apply for the job abroad. Either you know the language or you don't. It's that simple.

I am not saying only English. English is not as important as people think, at least in Europe. And blindly embracing the one language the current system tells you to embrace is a huge mistake, in my opinion. Many better textbooks are in English, true. But if you want to work in a German, swedish, austrian or french hospital, there are other logical choices.
1 person has voted this message useful



Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4670 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 22 of 22
23 September 2013 at 6:56am | IP Logged 
This is true, it's easier for a Continental European MD to get a job in Sweden, Germany or even Switzerland than in UK or Ireland, so in this particular case, Scandinavian languages and German may be more important than English.

British medical establishment prefers Commonwealth doctors (those from India, Pakistan, Australia, NZ) to those from Germany, Italy, Czech Republic...

Edited by Medulin on 23 September 2013 at 6:57am



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