[Foundation-l] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)

[David Gerard]

On 19 September 2010 20:08, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am not from Italy, but speaking generally about languages and
> language varieties around the world, I will say that it is true that
> for the most part, any concept that can be expressed in one language
> can be expressed in another. In some cases, this may require the use
> of loanwords or other lexical adaptations, but there is no such thing
> as a language variety that is "unsuited" to discuss politics, science
> or philosophy. Just because the variety has not been used for that
> kind of thing in the past does not mean it is incapable of expressing
> those concepts.


Although you can be faced with the sort of choices many major
languages, languages whose speakers have a great deal of pride in
them, faced when needing words for concepts in 20th century science
and technology: cut'n'paste vocabulary from English, or make up a
complete set of synthetic terms for the sake of differentiating
themselves from English. Both are problematic, though I'm not sure
what form an ideal solution would take.


- d.