There is a piece in Nature that I find interesting, Let me start at the end and then proceed. The author notes:
However, to move beyond science and communicate with the public, researchers must be able to speak the language of our audience in a literal sense — which is not always English. There’s an expression in Irish: ‘Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam’, which means, ‘A country without a language is a country without a soul’. Like a country, science needs to reflect the linguistic diversity of the general population. Having people at all levels of academia who speak multiple languages, including Irish and other minority languages, is important in bringing science to the masses and can benefit our scientific endeavours.
Now I managed in 6 languages, starting in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Greek. Frankly my Greek was starting to get good but I had to depart. Growing up on Staten Island Italian was the lingua franca. We spoke Spanish at home since it was my father's first job after school and before the War. Argentinian but I did not know this until decades later. I tried Irish but it is a horrible language.
My grandfather, from Mohill in County Lietrim, would say; the best thing the English did for us was to give us a language. English s a messy language but can be understood in one form or another anywhere. The poor Irish school child must study Irish. Not that it has any use by De Valera thought it would create a nation. Why not Spanish! For anyone who tried Irish you have my sympathies.
The author states:
English is the working language of laboratories across the world; it is used in presentations at international conferences and in published papers. In some respects, this is a positive step for science. Mobility of researchers, communication and dissemination are the three pillars on which science is built, and a common language across borders strengthens these core values.
Actually if you are in medicine it helps to know Greek and Latin, things then make sense. English fills in the spots. In Greece, my initial introduction was secondary classic Greek, so I got the alphabet, then medicine, and then as one looks at men's room and women's room, at least back then they were separate, they were anthropos and gyneke.
I really do not think Irish brings anything to the table.Like Czech, it is spoken by at most a few million, and one needs a real lingua franca. So keep English, it is a mess of a language but somehow like Democracy it works.
Posts
