On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:53 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/7/10 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
So, even a discipline with a lot of polyglots can't work without lingua franca.
I remember reading in Isaac Asimov's autobiography how, as a chemist in the 1940s, he had to learn French and German well enough to read papers in those languages. So the lingua franca in a field varies with time as well as field.
English is the last lingua franca. In 20-30 years we'll have good enough translators and in 20-30 years it is not big enough period of time for changing lingua franca.