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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| guesto Groupie Australia Joined 5740 days ago 76 posts - 118 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 17 of 22 20 November 2009 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Did they start writing in their own native tongues, or in the lingua franca of the time? There's a big difference. Latin was spoken only by the elite, but the European lingua francas (French, German, English) were probably spoken by people a lot lower down too.
Sure, popular science and low level textbooks should be published in all languages, definitely, but leading-edge research is usually done in English because you have to read what everyone is writing, and these people are spread out all over the world. In the past people wrote in their national languages but they were restricted to communicating with compatriots. Luckily this restriction no longer exists and you can share ideas with anyone. Nowadays, you just pop off an email to someone on the other side of the world and get an answer in 5 minutes. But the price for this convenience is that people need to know English. Also, it's not so easy to translate this stuff because you need to actually understand it, i.e. it would have to be the scientists who actually write it translating their own work - not a very fun prospect! The English approach is working so far and is already very advanced. There are no other realistic alternatives. Everybody learns five languages instead of one? Then when would they do their research? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 18 of 22 20 November 2009 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
To be honest, I don't quite see the comparison between English and Latin to be as apt as it appears. When Latin was used as a lingua franca after the fall of the Roman Empire, it wasn't really the living language or native language for anyone outside the Roman administration or church. The next nearest thing to Latin then was Vulgar Latin which subsequently evolved into Old French, Old Portuguese, etc. For sure by the Dark Ages, Latin was pretty much the language of the Catholic clergy and what few educated elites there were (provided that they hadn't been ostracized let alone burned at the stake!) but it's highly probable that it wasn't a native language for anyone (what also makes things fuzzy is that "Latin" had changed as anyone who has compared Classical Latin and Medieval Latin can attest to). English on the other hand is not only the language of an educated class/elite today (or viewed as such), it (or one of its variants) is also the first language of 328 million people in 112 countries (source: Ethnologue - if we start including those who are fluent users of English as anything after the first language, the number and distribution rises even further). N.B. This size or distribution is something that Latin didn't have starting from the Dark Ages. Thus a new finding in a scientific journal today generally has the greatest reach if it is published in English (considering the number of interested parties who speak English either natively or at a sufficiently advanced level to be able to learn about the new development or finding). While this may bother people who bristle at the omnipresence of English as a communicative code, there's more to be had by making the best of it instead of railing against it at every turn. Cap'n Haddock, I agree that much scientific progress was made in Europe after vernacular language was elevated from its previously culturally subordinated status relative to Latin. However looking for a causal relationship with the rise of vernacular languages acting as the catalyst that got things going in European scientific research seems to overlook something greater than all of the vernacular languages put together. European development and interest in scientific inquiry was part of the gradual shift in mindset emerging by the 1400s that the Clergy might not hold all of the "right" answers. This also led to the renewal of European exploration/colonization (the Vikings' exploits in North America and Greenland had apparently been long forgotten by people outside Scandinavia). I'm inclined to view the scientific endeavours of for example Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Vesalius as part of the spirit or "Zeitgeist" of the early Renaissance. Gutenberg's printing press did a lot to help disseminate ideas - but his invention was "language-neutral" as his invention could be adaapted for any language. The decisive criterion was how to make it as accessible as possible to the target audience and so European printing presses put out a lot of scientific works in Latin. Elevation of vernacular language couldn't have been the cause for this explosion in scientific or cultural development, but it certainly helped things move along once some pioneers had set precedents or figuratively allowed successive generations to stand on their shoulders. While the use of Bibles in the vernacular language instead of Latin was revolutionary for the time and had far-reaching consequences, many scientists still published their findings in Latin. It would not have been very effective for them to have printed their findings in their own vernaculars because the target readership/audience had to be educated and at the time the only common "code" among educated Europeans was Latin (forgive me if I omit the achievements of Muslim or Chinese scholars! To keep this post from being longer than it already is, I'm talking only about Europe). For Isaac Newton, Copernicus' findings would very likely have been unintelligible if Copernicus had published his findings only in vernacular be it Middle Polish or some kind of Middle German, since as far as I know Newton knew only his native Early Modern English, Latin and possibly some Ancient Greek. Copernicus' pioneering research in astronomy was published in Latin. Some of Newton's research was published in Latin including the famous "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (English translation: "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), but commonly referred to in English using part of the original Latin title, "Principia". In the end what matters more than the language used to convey the message or research, is the content itself. As long as the intended audience/readership can "get it", that's what matters most to the researcher or discoverer. For European scholars of the Late Middle Ages, Renaissance or even the Age of Enlightenment, Latin served as the primary communicative vehicle among themselves and it was only with the passage of time that scientific findings began to appear in ever greater numbers in the vernacular language. In fact, when the Hungarian astronomer János Sajnovics was stargazing in Lapland in 1769, he was struck by the similarities between the local Lappish language and that of his native Hungarian. This diversion into linguistics led to the publication of his findings in Latin (which were only later translated into Hungarian) and they were a breakthrough in comparative Finno-Ugric linguistics. His book was the first text of any permanence that encouraged more research in this field. It was only after his work that research into Uralic languages that was written/published in vernacular originals began to be appear from newer generations of scholars. Sajnovic's work suggests to me that even by the second half of the 18th century, the mass of vernacular speakers (here Hungarians) wouldn't have be that interested in research in comparative linguistics. Therefore Sajnovics targeted his findings by using Latin which still had enough currency among the target audience of scholars whom he believed would take him seriously or understand his work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 19 of 22 20 November 2009 at 6:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I just came across something that I think should illustrate the point that what matters in research should be the message (i.e. the content) rather than the messenger (i.e. the language) (In a certain way, book-burning can illustrate this. John Wycliffe's books were part of a book-burning in 1410 led by the illiterate archbishop of Prague. The archbishop had presumably heard of a link between the content of Wycliffe's books and the teachings of the Czech priest and reformer, Jan Hus).
In the 1920s, a Japanese meteorologist, Wasaburo Ooishi was the first to quantify jet streams after conducting research using weather balloons. As important as his research was (and turned out to be), he published his findings in Esperanto because of his belief in the power or virtue of Esperanto. All of this was done even though he already had connections with the International Meteorological Organization and had travalled to the USA and Germany. With hindsight, he probably would have done science a bigger favour by casting a wider net by publishing in a language with greater currency). Unfortunately for him, his research as published in Esperanto was rendered effectively inaccessible because of the relatively poor currency of Esperanto, and so knowledge about the jet stream came about in fits and spurts afterwards from outside Japan and rather by accident. Indeed, the American test pilot, Wiley Post noted differences between his ground speed and airspeed while on high-altitude test flights and is widely credited for discovering (experiencing) the jet stream in 1934. German scientists in the second half of the 1930s wondered about the jet stream while pilots in WWII flying in bombing raids or transatlantic flights at high-altitude experienced the jet stream. It wasn't until 1947 when Erik Palmén of Finland while working at the Chicago School of Meteorology (part of the University of Chicago) contributed his findings on the jet stream to a groundbreaking paper (in English) of collective authorship did knowledge about the jet stream grow beyond anecdotal evidence. This anecdote should remind people that however repugnant it seems to "homogenize" scientific publications by publishing in common or widely-used language (be it Latin in the past, English now, and who knows what in the future), the cost of limiting its spread by avoiding a common or widely-used publication language (or implicitly raising costs by hiring translators) shouldn't be overlooked. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5764 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 20 of 22 20 November 2009 at 6:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well put! You know how science works... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6767 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 21 of 22 20 November 2009 at 8:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Scientists began writing in their native tongues. Leeowenhoek wrote in Dutch, for example.
Well, I do it for a living and while it is hard, that's my specialty. I can write much better technical English than any of the Japanese scientists and engineers I've translated for.
It's probably easier for many people to gain passive reading skills in several languages (especially European ones) than to reach a level of English where they can write a clear and intelligent paper. Edited by Captain Haddock on 20 November 2009 at 8:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 22 20 November 2009 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There is no doubt that having an international language for communicating reasearch results all over the planet is necessary, and the only realistic candidate right now is English. For the same reason this forum is mainly written in English. But all good things can become too much, and letting all national languages become secondary vehicles for science magazines is an example of this. As I pointed out in my previous post we are not there yet - there are lots of differences between the different editions of international magazines, and if you search beyond the usual offers in the kiosk you will also find purely national magazines about advanced themes.
The problem with the development is twofold: it robs the national languages of a large and important area for expression (effectively reducing them to dumbed-down vehicles for empty gossip), and it is an important factor behind the everincreasing monopolisation of communication. This may be an oldfashioned and conservative and backwards looking attitude, but if the 'globalising' trend isn't confronted then we will soon just have one science magazine in each country, and that one will only have articles translated from English. The rest will be underground literature which you can't buy in ordinary shops. Edited by Iversen on 20 November 2009 at 11:27am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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