English Has the Scientific Edge -- For Now (axios.com) 241
For centuries, science was a multilingual affair, powered by French, German, English and other tongues. But since the early 1970s, English has become the undisputed lingua franca of scientific papers, conferences, and discourse. From a report: English-speaking countries now have a huge leg up in technical research, including the current rages -- artificial intelligence and quantum computing. But, while English is highly unlikely to be dethroned, its advantages are eroding due to an increasingly healthy research environment in China, the fast transmission of research papers across the internet, and AI-aided translation technology that is shrinking the language barrier. [...] The dominance of English gives native speakers a huge advantage, says Michael Gordin, a Princeton professor who specializes in the role of language in technological advance.
Not entirely (Score:2)
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Going back a bit further everything was in Latin.
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Going back a bit further everything was in Latin.
Indeed, and that wasn't a bad idea because most learned men of most (western) nations knew Latin.
I'd argue Esperanto might be a better language for scientific papers going forwards. It's perhaps the easiest language to learn (of the well known languages), it is, itself very scientific in how it is put together. Has a smaller group of root words, but they can be combined more easily than other languages. It wouldn't take much to make Esperanto the language of the learned it is so easy to learn.
It is mostl
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As a further observation. Russia and China might object to "English" on political grounds (and the West would certainly bristle at the complicated Mandarin and be politically opposed to learning Russian).
Esperanto gets rid of politics when trying to come up with standards.
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The unreality of saying it is easier to make people learn a second language that just sticking with English, yeah kind of fucking stupid, which is exactly why Esperanto is exactly where it is. I remeber coming across an old text about battle English, the created language which merged together a series of other languages to make communications on the battlefield possible across a variety of nationalities.
English ain't even English in reality, not a regional tongue but an assemblage of regional tongues, main
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No they doesn't. Stop lying.
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Is that a necessary condition for something to be a language?
By your "logic" if I sit down with the kids tomorrow and we invent a new language then it's not a language.
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English is the market leader because it is the language with the largest vocabulary by a very large margin. With this comes a culture of being very specific by choosing from a large number of words with quite similar meanings (despite the best efforts of many whose vocabulary is very limited).
Many other languages have far smaller vocabularies, and have cultures where being specific is not highly prized. This makes them less suitable for science and engineering,
In my relatively
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That has been over for a while now. The last German-language Chemistry journal shut down something like 10 years ago.
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I just checked Colorado State (alma mater) chem curriculum for ACS, and apparently, no longer required.
Kind of a bummer. I did not have to do that since I only had a minor, but I thought that it was useful.
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You're half right. When I started my Ph. D. in Chemistry in 1993, there was no more formal language requirement, and for a number of years prior to that grad students had to show working proficiency in one of (IIRC) German, Russian, French, or Japanese.
OTOH, there are still German chemistry journals. Angewandte Chemie publishes in both German and English, or did last time I bothered to look at the non-international version. AFAIK, several other journals such as Zeitschrift Naturforschung are still published
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Sure, the Journals did not shut down. But they either switched to English or now allow English in addition.
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Duh (Score:2)
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Metric conjugations:
To walk To centiwalk To kilowalk
Let's run with that.
One thing I wish I would have known earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet even then I had an inclination towards science. Now many years past college, I repeatedly realize that the language I should have taken is indeed German. While I have never met someone at a conference who speaks German but not English, I almost never meet anyone at a conference who speaks any significant degree of Spanish. In my field the top languages after English are almost certainly German, Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, and Dutch (in that order). I meet more people speaking Norwegian than I meet speaking Spanish.
Sure, Spanish is useful for many people, but I could have instead studied a language of use to me back then.
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Sorry, but if you "suffered" studying Spanish, which is among the easiest languages for a native English speaker to learn, you would have never hacked it studying German, let alone Mandarin, Russian, Japanese, or Hindi.
I think you are confusing the words "suffer" and "struggle".
I suffered through 3 hours of an opera once, but that doesn't mean it was difficult for me to sit there doing nothing.
Not sure about the advantages (Score:3)
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To native speakers, I mean. I have noticed that (educated) foreigners who learnt English as a second language all too often seem to be able to write better English than native speakers. Learning English natively will give you an edge if you aspire to become a horse racing commentator for the BBC. For writing up research papers (or books) on physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, etc. not so much.
I have found that educated, non-native English speakers generally understand English very well, speak English fairly well, and write somewhat well. Grammar and diction are often challenging. For example, one very common challenge is knowing when to include an article such as "a" or "the", which is intuitive to a native speaker but is often difficult to describe precisely with a rule for those who are not linguists. I read and review a fair number of technical papers, and I have found that is it not uncom
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Learning a second language, any second language, can help you to communicate more clearly in both that language and your native language. A hundred years ago people would have studied Latin fully expecting that kind of practical benefit with no expectation of ever actually speaking Latin.
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It's not just foreigners who learn English, it's English speakers who learn a foreign language too. For some reason teach English has devolved to the studying of literature without every explaining simple things like the components that make up a sentence.
I didn't know what the "past participle" was until I learnt a second language. And it was while learning that second language that I started correcting some of my poor English.
AI-aided translation technology (Score:3)
Here's how you get Americans to pay for science (Score:4, Interesting)
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Don't think we won't!
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"Vunce zey go up, who cares where they come down?
Zat's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
translation services? (Score:2)
Just because translations exist doesn't mean English is losing its edge. Virtually all top journals in pure sciences require publication in English. The one exception I've seen is French. Quite a few top math journals still allow French.
code written in Chinese (Score:2)
Think about having English as your first language and maintaining code written in Chinese.
its advantages are eroding due to an increasingly (Score:2)
> its advantages are eroding due to an increasingly healthy research environment in China
I have not heard stupider shit in ages.
Kaveh Waddell, you are an imbecile and should consider self-imposed vow of silence.
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From the Summary:
>English has become the undisputed lingua franca
I wonder if they know what that means... or if they were going for that on purpose.
I wonder if the author also confuses words like pizza and lasagna as being English words.
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And here's another thing - they all used plain ol' ascii. None of that poncy unicode shit.
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They were just sticking their thumb in the frog's eye.
The french are really butthurt that frogish is now a backwater language.
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Mercedes Benz, the Cadillac of cars.
(Red Wriggler, the Cadillac of worms)
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Because of all the liberal idiots that just LOVE illegal immigration, pretty soon English won't even be the dominant language spoken in the United States.
So currently about 80% of households speak English as their dominant language at home, as opposed to 13% of those who speak Spanish as their dominant language at home. Other than ignorance, I'm not sure how you have come to the conclusion that English won't be the dominant language in the United States for the foreseeable future.
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The people who are in houses speaking Spanish today will have grandchildren that won't speak a word of it.
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Not in places like San Diego or El Paso.
We run the risk of being culturally balkanized. TV helps, but schools need to be English only.
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So let me get this straight: you stole territory from another country, colonized their land, and somehow you're still mad that people from the area don't want to speak the language you forced upon them?
Let's do the opposite. Russia and China nuke the US down. Now your territory is divided between the two. You're a Chinese citizen now. As a law-abiding citizen I EXPECT YOU to speak chinese at all times.
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And what's wrong with that? San Diego was originally founded by the Spanish conquistidors and later was a part of Mexico. El Paso used to be a city that straddled the border and the citizens freely walked back and forth until the border patrol beefed up its presence.
What is so special about American culture anway? And why is a homogenous culture even remotely important?
Virtually everyone in America has ancestors that came from somewhere else, and a very large number of US citizens were born in different c
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I don't care what they speak, as long as the list includes English.
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...and that it's still not uncommon for many people today to have grandparents who grew up speaking Italian, German, Polish, Norwegian, etc. at home instead of English.
/me waves
My grandfather (born in the early 20th century) learned Yiddish from his parents at home, learned French from the rest of the neighborhood, and didn't learn English until he started school.
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as opposed to 13% of those who speak Spanish as their dominant language at home.
Not only that. I worked with a guy whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico in the 1950s or 1960s. He went into the Army and after he was dinged on a fitrep for his thick accent being a barrier to effective communication with other soldiers, he decided that his kids weren't going to go through that. He instituted a strict English-only policy at home and as a consequence, my co-worker (who had a very Latino name) speaks only English (and that with a Texas accent).
Not every immigrant family has an Eng
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As a native English speaker living in a foreign speaking country, I would absolutely primarily speak English at home with my children. I don't yet have children, so I mostly speak the native language at home in order to hone my skills, however that will change when I have kids. Being immersed in the local lingo, they'll have no problem learning it - no doubt to a level far higher than my own! But using English at home will give them the rare opportunity to simultaneously learn a second language to native pr
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Not every immigrant family has an English-only policy at home, but I have interacted with enough people who grew up with that to conclude that it is not all that uncommon.
The vast majority of the time, the grandchildren of immigrants are only fluent in English. Even without an "English only at home" rule. They might be able to converse a bit in another language, similar to someone who learned that language in high school.
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Why does it even matter if English isn't the dominant language anyway? It's not like all the English speakers here are natives anyway. And not even all of the original 13 colonies were English speaking or founded by the English. They spoke Spanish in Southwest before English speakers showed up. Texas used to be a part of Mexico until the upstart gringos got pissed that they couldn't own slaves. The only American "culture" we have is what we've stolen and modified from other countries. If English decline
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Post colonialism, immigration is what kept English dominant in the first place. You take people from other countries in, show them what a real civilization looks like, and some of them they take that, and English, back to their homelands. The kids of the ones that stay become inadvertent English teachers to whoever else arrives. Only the knee-jerk primitives among us fail to realize that you have to be culturally evangelical to avoid fading away... if you just shut yourself up in your hill fort people ju
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America was a backwards country for a very long time. It wasn't until WWI that the US was really taken seriously on the world stage. Muc of the early immigration came from countries that were just as civilized as the US, the immigrants were showing up because their home country had famines, economic slump, or they were from a group discriminated against at home. Outside of former British colonies, It wasn't until the economic boom in the US in the twentieth century that English become more popular.
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Plenty of people who understand how language actually works snicker at your snickering.
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There is never a bad time to mock the french.
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I always snicker when I hear of English being the lingua franca of anything. If I'm not mistaken, 'lingua franca' means literally 'French language' and stems from the days when French was the international language.
Some day, English may be the lingua franca of France.
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Lingua Franca does not mean "French". It originally was used to refer to a pidjin language in common use in the eastern Mediterranean area from 11th century, which probably was more Italian based than French.
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I always snicker when I hear of English being the lingua franca of anything. If I'm not mistaken, 'lingua franca' means literally 'French language' and stems from the days when French was the international language.
I don't like using French words. They fatigue me.
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Who were the Franks? Anyone west of Rome/Italy is a Frank. It is like that famous cartoon of New Yorker's view of America. There is Hudson, New Jersey ... and San Francisco somewhere over there.
It means a link language, language of communications between the unwashed masses, while the high society of priests were using Latin.
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....you're hearing less and less English spoken in the US these days.
You're saying that like it's a bad thing. The US doesn't have an official language. I would think that in the Land of the Free people could speak whatever language they want.
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And that is a problem.
We should pass laws stating that English IS the official language in this country.....other countries have an official language.
We should too.
If we didn't print everything in other languages too, it would help people coming here to learn it faster.
That same type of immersion situation we use in language classes in college, where English is only spoken the first day and the rest of the time, it is the language of whatever class you are in.
I
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Some countries have multiple official languages as well... Also note that making an official language only means that official documents are in that language, not that people are required to learn it or are forbidden to use other languages. Making English the official language of the US would not actually change anything about how people speak or how documents are written.
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If adopting English as the official language in the USA would not change anything then why do so many people oppose adopting English as the official language?
I have my own theories. The problems of French and English use in Canada is an example of what could happen in the USA if a single official language is not adopted. Those opposing a single official language are looking to produce in the USA that same kind of division of the public seen in Canada.
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Individual states may have their own rules. But in California we have our ballots in multiple languages, it does not cause any problems. I believe that English is required for some purposes, such as an ingredient list on food, but that does not forbid the use of other languagues as well.
I don't really see the use of both French and English on Canadian *products* to be a problem; the French/English divide in Canada comes more from Quebec attitudes that everyone needs to be bilingual except them.
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Since this thread is about science, how about we do an experiment?
Method: take one standard off-the-shelf USA, and have it not adopt an official language. Leave it a couple of centuries.
Result: no problems of French and English use like in Canada were detected.
Conclusion: you are full of shit.
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And that is a problem.
Why?
And while explaining this, keep in mind in the vast majority of cases the grandchildren of any non-English-speaking immigrants only speak English fluently.
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I thought the entire point was to *not* do what other countries do, because communism and #MAGA and NUMBER ONE!
Or does that only apply to things like public healthcare, not allowing crackpots to run round slaughtering anyone they don't like the look of, or separating politics and religion?
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There are plenty of countries in the world where people "can't talk to each other".
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Belgium, Switzerland, India, South Africa.
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also Paraguay where a large part of the population only speaks Guarani but no Spanish.
China has hundreds of dialects and often people from different parts of the country can't communicate.
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....you're hearing less and less English spoken in the US these days.
I know, it's great, I love hearing all the different languages spoken, it's like being in a modern country now.
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It was even nicer only say, a few decades ago...when you could walk anywhere in public and understand what was being said around you....and you generally only heard Spanish spoken in public if you were visiting border towns.
It is much nicer when everyone speaks the 'common' language in public, which used to be English.
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So everyone in America should speak English because you don't like not being able to eaves drop on other's conversations?
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don't need to eavesdrop, here's what they're saying:
if it's arabic they're talking about blowing shit up and killing people and popping their suicide belt.
if it's spanish it's how they snuck in here around Trump's 20 mile long wall and are going to steal your job.
if it's Black English they're talking about how they're going to shiv your white ass and fuck your women
if it's Chinese or Indian it's how they're going to take all the tech jobs and higher education classes leaving you with burger smashing jobs an
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That's sarcasm I hope?
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yes, mentioning Trump's 20 mile long wall (it may be up to 37 miles now) should have clued you in.
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Written text is a notoriously poor medium for sarcasm as so much of truly good sarcasm it tied up in tonal or physical posturing.
Be happy I basically got your poor use of the medium.
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England is conveniently located within 30 day's sailing time from the eastern seaboard of the US, as a result there are regions there called "new england" and other major cities were named after other major areas in Europe... New York City was famously once called new Amsterdam.
So then, it shouldn't be surprising that as you head south, you have a lot of Spanish speakers, the cities often are named "San ____", reflecting their Spanish/Mexican heritage due to Spanish colonization from the south.
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Less and less science too. Funny, that.
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Less and less science too. Funny, that.
I agree, only I'm not laughing. (Not that you are. "Curious" would, IMHO, be a better choice than "funny".)
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....you're hearing less and less English spoken in the US these days.
One must admit.
President Trump is a "bigly" part of the of the problem on that one.
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Yes, it's not needed, but it is also desirable to know a second language. Everywhere else in the world people are expected to learn a second or third language. Whether that's to get along better with neighbors and have trade, or because the country has multiple languages.
Much of that reason also I think is that America was somewhat isolated for a very long time, and for a period was intentionally isolationist. In schools you would be disciplined in the past for speaking a second language as well, even if
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Well, another thing is...the United States of America, is so large, you really can very easily grow up here and never have any reason or cause to leave the country.
So, I'd venture to guess that the vast majority of US citizens don't have a passport and don't travel outside the US, and never run into any need to speak another language.
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I don't argue at all that learning more than one language is a GREAT thing!!
However, if you LIVE in the US, you should use English as your p
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Why is that?
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Because if you don't you will be severely limiting your economic opportunities. It is also disrespectful.
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It's only limiting your opportunities if you're economic opportunities only involved people who only speak English. If you're working with people who speak another language, you'd be limiting your economic opportunities by speaking English.
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It's nice to know if they are talking ABOUT you.
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If you're that worried about what strangers are saying about you, you might want to see a psychologist. That doesn't seem, to me, like a healthy state of mind.
They might be tairsts or cormanusts (Score:2)
Probably best to shoot them anyway, just to be on the safe side.
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Note that in Europe and many other places, students start to learn a second language at a young age. In the US this doesn't happen until high school or later, where it is only optional. It used to be required to study a second language in many colleges or pre-college tracks in high schools, even if you didn't learn enough to be able to read a foreign language book easily.
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Yes, or possibly no. (Ask W C Fields).
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Eat shit, then. After all flies overwhelmingly outnumber humans or any other mammal.
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That must be why they say the plane was brought down by a missal or that medieval peasants lived under the futile system.
Don't get me started about ''nuclear''. See where the ''u'' is? See what's between the ''c'' and the ''l''?
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Careful. You'll set off the "languages evolve" twats who'll find some convoluted way to eggcorn it.
Re:Modern American English (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern American English is a combination of English and many other languages (Spanish, French, German and others)
In many ways, it's a sort of global language that continually evolves.
You didn't need to specify "American" there as that is true for all varieties of mainstream English. Of course, what's even more fun is when you consider that almost half of English words have a French-connection. "French" was originally a pidgin of Germanic languages and Latin. (the Franks being a German tribe settling in an area which had been speaking Latin because of the Roman rule for centuries). German is a mishmash of various regional variants that came to form one language and has borrowed from it's neighbours.
English has also taken on words from India, Turkey, Native Americans, and more. So we speak a put-together language that took it's inspiration from other languages that were put-together from other combinations.
200 years from now I bet Chinese and English will be influencing each other heavily with English words being adopted into Mandarin and Mandarin words being adopted into English. Language is a beautiful messed up thing.
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You don't need to wait 200 years. It is happening now in parts of London. But it is not limited to Chinese and English.
The reality is English's big advantage is it can easily adopt words from other languages, and the concepts that go with them. Many other languages cannot adopt words form other languages due to a variety of restrictive rules, and therefore lack the ability to benefit from access to ideas developed in oth
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Headline: "English Has the Scientific Edge -- For Now"
Synopsis: "But, while English is highly unlikely to be dethroned"
So for now and probably always?
Always is a very long time.
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I took four years of Latin in high school, and I can tell you I learned more about the English language in Latin class, than I ever did in English class.
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Then you have drunk too much Trump Kool-ade.
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Sure. At a point where there wasn't any television, movies, radio, printing presses, recorded music and ... I'm sure I'm missing something else but I can't quite put my finger on it.