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Language most useful for science world? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5471 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes  Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 17 of 22 04 February 2010 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Saif's ranking pretty much confirms what I already suspected.
I've been attending a Dutch-language university for one term now and when I've looked for scientific articles regarding my studies, most are in English, and multiple in French. There were also a couple of German articles, and one Japanese one, which were unable to be read by me due to my low skill in those languages. Of course, it depends entirely in what you're interested. If it's the history of European art for example, then a smaller language such as Italian might be useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jamie Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5896 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 18 of 22 17 February 2010 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
I am a scientist, so I hope that I can offer a useful perspective. As others have said, English is the dominant language in science and almost all practising scientists can speak it at some level. Mathematics goes out-of-date very slowly - a theorem proved in 1900 is still correct today - so an ability to read German to access pre-war mathematics research could still be very useful. A lot of theoretical physics in the 20th century was published in Russian, and sometimes discovered independently by other researchers unable to read the original publications. Latin and Greek are unnecessary. As for the next 50 years, your guess is as good as mine! Mandarin is an obvious choice, and will be useful outside scientific fields as well. Several Western universities are opening campuses in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring countries, for which Arabic will be needed. The Saudi government are pouring incredible amounts of money into what they hope will become a world-class science university, called KAUST. There's a lot of good work being done in India, so how about Hindi/Urdu? And I like the suggestion above of Portuguese - the amount of science coming from Brazil will only improve, I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| didaskolos Newbie United States Joined 6844 days ago 10 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Sign Language, Mandarin | Message 19 of 22 17 February 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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As a physicist working in industry, here's my take on things.
I see three primary reasons to learn a language (when viewed with usefulness for physics). 1. Being able to read materials in your field. Having a basic reading knowledge of a language is often adequate here. The reality is that many physics articles are heavily mathematical with many technical terms. I would guess many native speakers of a language could not make heads or tails of a theoretical physics article written in their own native language. In contrast, a physicist knowing little of the language could likely follow much of the mathematics and have some understanding of the technical terms. Between my knowledge of German, Greek, Latin/Romance cognates in English, and online dictionaries, I've been able to get needed information out of technical documents written in languages I do not know. How equations and numbers are expressed is fairly universal. Of course, down the line, I'd like to learn more languages. (Why else would I be on this site? :) 2. Being able to communicate with colleagues. This would take more work to develop both speaking/listening and reading/writing skills. However, if most communication is by e-mail, reading/writing skills are a higher priority. My own German conversational skills are poor due to lack of practice. However, the slower pace of e-mail allows me to communicate adequately in German. On the other hand, if you are in an observatory in Chile, at a particle accelerator in Japan, or a research lab in Germany, conversational skills in the appropriate language would be useful. 3. For fun. Do you want to travel? Is there a class of literature you want to read in original languages? Do you think learning languages for learning's sake is fun? Is there a language and culture which simply strikes your fancy? If you love Russian literature and want to visit Siberia in winter, have at it and get the added benefit of more understanding of technical articles in Russian. If the only reason to learn Russian is to read technical articles, and you never want to read War and Peace, it might be difficult to maintain motivation to keep working on it. Best of luck in your physics studies. I have zero regrets about going into math and physics. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 20 of 22 17 February 2010 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin may be a good choice for the future. There is a lot of good stuff in German, French, and Russian and they
are all easier than Chinese if your native language is English. (You might be able learn to read all three of them before you can read Chinese but I don't think Chinese is THAT difficult.) Focus isn't my strength so I always say "do them all". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| starst Triglot Senior Member China Joined 5516 days ago 113 posts - 133 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: FrenchC1, German, Norwegian | Message 21 of 22 17 February 2010 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Once a friend of mine who is doing a phd on network security complained to me that several recent important papers were published in Chinese and the author didn't speak much English. And it was very difficult to find a proper translator, because it was top peer research. Generally, you can expect the Chinese researchers to speak understandable English, but not that well if she/he doesn't have any longterm international experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 22 of 22 17 February 2010 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478255/
I don't question the talent, I just wonder if they are able to publish their research. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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