Solutions for International Communication (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Solutions for International Communication
Tags: Lingua franca
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

42 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5962 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

Message 41 of 42

15 March 2010 at 1:58am | IP Logged

vb wrote:

This is why English should be taught from the age of school entry there (and everywhere). Our progress as a species depends on everyone's participation in the most important fields of inquiry - every school leaver being fluent maximises the number and quality of students entering these fields (language is no longer a barrier to entry) and settling on a lingua franca maximises communication between researchers.

It would be ideal if, as you said, all scientists would speak the same language and for the entire scientific community to be able to exchange ideas with each other in one language. However, I think the pros and cons of the existence of one or two other scientific lingua francas such as Mandarin would at the very least balance each other out. Although I suspect that Mandarin as a scientific lingua franca would create a net gain for the world thanks to the hurdles being lowered for the 1.5 billion East Asians to participate in the scientific community.
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vb
Octoglot
Senior Member
Afghanistan
Joined 6424 days ago
112 posts - 135 votes

Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Swedish

Message 42 of 42

15 March 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged

lichtrausch wrote:

However, I think the pros and cons of the existence of one or two other scientific lingua francas such as Mandarin would at the very least balance each other out. Although I suspect that Mandarin as a scientific lingua franca would create a net gain for the world thanks to the hurdles being lowered for the 1.5 billion East Asians to participate in the scientific community.

Yes, but presumably to ensure that East Asia's students are sufficiently competent to face no barrier to entry to science practised in Mandarin, they would require a programme of study close to that that would be required were English settled on: in other words, involving use of the language from the age of school entry onwards.

All it would take is English tuition being rolled out across primary schools globally and we could all reap the benefits a couple of decades on. English is the wisest choice given its advantageous current position; choosing another language would be less efficient generally, and markedly less efficient in those areas in which communication matters most (for instance, in English-dominated science).
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