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

[Pavlo Shevelo]

> ...he had to learn French and German well enough to read

I'd like to stress that he needed French *and* German meaning that in
any field of activity dominating lingua franca (or lingua anglica ) is
not the only foreign language that one will need to know in order to
really profess that field.

Even in computer sciences & engineering where  lingua anglica is
undisputable dominator in some (not so rare) cases one should beg
Google Translate to assist in grasping some article or forum posting
made in Spanish, German, French… (to name a few)


On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 2:53 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.
>
>
> - d.
>
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