Scientific English

Nobel Prize for Medicine was recently awarded to two Norwegians whose thesis was originally published in English. Article discusses new book, Scientific Babel, on how English became the dominant language in science. Author's conclusion is that English didn't ascend but that German was pushed out (due to World Wars). Following WWI, 23 States criminalized speaking German. SCOTUS decision overturned those bans de jure, but de facto they were still followed and that caused US to decrease/minimalize foreign language study. Also, Europe stopped inviting Germans and Austrians to science conferences. Article/book points out that Galileo was the first scientist to publish in his native language.

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6 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Chuck says:

    Interesting. If you want your scientific work to be known, you have to publish it in English, and no one in the scientific word complains about this. Scientific journals in other languages play second fiddle to those written in English.

    (Also, another reason perhaps the Norwegians published it in English has to do with the Norwegian language itself, which has four written varieties, all different!)

    My beef with German: common nouns are capitalized and words are too long. I’m just glad neither German nor “Austrian” became the language of science, :-).

    C’est la vie, je suppose …

    • Alain41 says:

      I like that we write American English, while most (rest?) of the world uses the Queen’s English, eg, learned vs learnt. And our format is still based on English measurements (8.5×11 in. paper) vs rest of the world uses metric paper size A4 (210×297 mm (approx. 8.3×11.7 in.)). So American written English is distinctive in word and format. We independent Yanks. 🙂

    • Charles_PA says:

      My thesis adviser, an Austrian, told me that if you want to hide bad research you publish it in French. 🙂

  2. Cathode Rays says:

    Have always delighted in the differences that two cultures have in the way they use the same language. In America, we use TV; in Britain, the use tele. A British math professor once explained to me how he got in trouble over here saying “I’ll knock you up in the morning.”

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