[Foundation-l] The problem with native languages vs. the lingua franca

[Milos Rancic]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:53 PM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/10 Milos Rancic <millosh at 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.