Best Language for Science (besides english)

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Exhumed, Apr 30, 2006.

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  1. Arkantos

    Arkantos Registered Senior Member

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    English because it's so dominant
    Latin because so much Latin is already used
    German because they were superior at like everything, not just science, before Hitler came and destroyed them.
     
    Arkantos, May 14, 2006
    #41

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  3. przyk

    przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    C,
    LISP,
    Java.
     
    przyk, May 15, 2006
    #42

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  5. valich

    valich Registered Senior Member

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    English because it is the current international language that ties our world together.

    Latin because so much Latin is already used to describe Nature in scientific terminology

    German because it is a superior language in conjugating and agglutinating words to describe technology and science.

    Chinese because one fourth of the world population speaks it and it is an up and coming rising star to be an international language in the future.
     
    valich, May 23, 2006
    #43

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  7. leopold

    leopold Valued Senior Member

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    best language for science?
    1. klingon
    2. romulan
    3. vulcan
     
    leopold, May 23, 2006
    #44
  8. Hurricane Angel

    Hurricane Angel I am the Metatron Registered Senior Member

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    Hurricane Angel, May 23, 2006
    #45
  9. micro

    micro Registered Member

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    I think any language can work for sciences, and if there's some difficulty, that language can easily be adapted with adding new words.
     
    micro, May 24, 2006
    #46
  10. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Adding new words doesn't solve all the problems. Highly inflected languages like Spanish and Japanese make sentences really long by filling them up with superfluous endings. Highly syntactical languages like French and German make word order really inflexible so it's difficult to express ideas in their natural sequence.

    English and Chinese are neither heavily inflected (zero for Chinese) nor rigid in their syntax, and both are quite expressive for science.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, May 25, 2006
    #47
  11. Absane

    Absane Rocket Surgeon Valued Senior Member

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    Esperanto... it's easy to learn. Well, to help scientists communicate with eachother. As for naming of things, latin is the way to go.
     
    Absane, May 25, 2006
    #48
  12. VitalOne

    VitalOne Banned Banned

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    I'd go with Latin or Sanskrit both are good for systematic things like science
     
    VitalOne, May 25, 2006
    #49
  13. Hapsburg

    Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

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    Latin. Duh.
     
    Hapsburg, May 25, 2006
    #50
  14. leopold

    leopold Valued Senior Member

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    concur
     
    leopold, May 25, 2006
    #51
  15. one_raven

    one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    Interesting.
    I was taught that English has inherited more from German than any other language.

    German also seems a more precise and exacting language with much fewer ambiguities and rule exceptions than English.

    Why, other than mere popularity, English would be superior, is beyond me.

    It seems to me that the only people who prefer English (otehr than for popularity) would be the ones who have it as their native language.
    Easy to learn? Precise? Consistent rules? Exacting grammar?
    None of these can be ascribed to English.
     
    one_raven, May 25, 2006
    #52
  16. Facial

    Facial Valued Senior Member

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    I quite agree with this opinion.

    However, since learning Latin is widely seen as an esoteric pursuit, I have instead turned my attention to Spanish, which is its largest descendant. Whether or not it is suitable as a language for science remains to be seen (as with the inflections issue)
     
    Facial, May 26, 2006
    #53
  17. Hapsburg

    Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

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    Well, English started out as a low saxon dialect, but after the Norman conquest, it became heavily franco-latin influenced. Hell, look at how many english words have "latin roots".
    English is also the most widely spoken language currently, so it should be a secondary language to latin, along with German.
     
    Hapsburg, May 26, 2006
    #54
  18. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Mandarin Chinese is the most widely-spoken language, followed by Hindi. We're a close third to Hindi (around 350 million for both) so if you count all the people who try to speak English as a second language we might come in second. But there's no way we can beat the 900 million speakers of Mandarin.

    German ranks only tenth, with barely 100 million. Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese have more speakers than German. Spanish, Bengali, and Arabic have more than twice as many.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, May 26, 2006
    #55
  19. Facial

    Facial Valued Senior Member

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    I've heard as many as 1.5 billion (native & nonnative) speakers for English. Is this false, then?
     
    Facial, May 30, 2006
    #56
  20. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    No, but there's no standard definition of a "non-native speaker." To me it implies the ability to communicate on a broader scope than suffices for a job on the margin of society. On my own powers-of-three scale I place it between 6 and 7, which means a vocabulary between 3,000 and 10,000 words and a comparable grasp of grammar and syntax. I think that's more than generous because it makes me a "non-native speaker" of Spanish and perhaps German, and I would be terrified at the thought of being a productive member of either of those societies. Do you think there are that many hundreds of millions of people who know that much English? To be the next level down with a vocabulary between 1,000 and 3,000 words should not qualify one to be called anything more than a student, a tourist, or a guest worker; not a "non-native speaker." But just because my definitions seem reasonable to me doesn't mean that these statisticians use them.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, May 30, 2006
    #57
  21. aristootle

    aristootle Pragmatician, InfinityPhobic Registered Senior Member

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    English is not very good for a long list of reasons. (but then, most languages have these problems).

    1. homonyms can confuse machines that act on verbal command.
    2. l looks like 1, O looks like 0 and cause lots of problems
    3. Analogies are confusing because they are not "wrapped" by analogy wrapper
    4. all those useless silent letters
    5. Needs easy, logical translation into machine understandable form
    6. not enough swear words

    I say we create a new language to address science, physics and computers, all in one. Lets call it Aristooles Language.
     
    aristootle, Jun 6, 2006
    #58
  22. Facial

    Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Excellent assessment. The definition of a nonnative language probably accounts for many of the huge variations in estimates.
     
    Facial, Jun 7, 2006
    #59
  23. Dr Hannibal Lecter

    Dr Hannibal Lecter Gentleman and Cannibal. Registered Senior Member

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    Klingonese.
     
    Dr Hannibal Lecter, Jun 10, 2006
    #60
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