6 ms·

Sure, you can express pretty much any concept from a foreign language in English, and vice-versa if the language is thorough enough. What you lose is the power

by sanoli 10y ago

Sure, you can express pretty much any concept from a foreign language in English, and vice-versa if the language is thorough enough. What you lose is the power and conciseness that comes from having a single word expressing a concept that would take 10 or 18 words to be correctly expressd in English. I have memorized a few interesting ones in some languages: 'Litost' (czech), 'Prozvonit' (czech also),'Tartle'(scottish), 'Mamihlapinatapei' (an idiom from Tierra del Fuego), 'Ya’aburnee' (arabic), and my own language's 'saudade', which to some is just translated as 'longing for something you have lost', but is, for native speakers, of course, something else.

danieltillett 10y ago
English is very interesting in that if a word makes sense to use (rather than a phrase) then English will borrow that word without hesitation. Actually because the language of science and technology is English there are lots of concepts that can’t be expressed in any other language. Sure any emotion a human can feel can be expressed in any language, but most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any language other than English. Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers.
- mablap 10y ago
  most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any language other than English. Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers. Please provide examples to support your baseless claim.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Pick any scientific paper at random. No other language other than English has the terms and concepts required to write the paper - you can’t translate most scientific papers into another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (many are written in other languages), just that we have settled on English as the language of science. The vast majority of new scientific papers are written in English and hence every new concept within them can’t be expressed in any other language since there are no corresponding vocabulary to map the new concept onto. You can of course make up a new term in an another language if you want, but in this is not done for the many new concepts since it is more productive to just work within English. Of course there are some papers that are written in a foreign language and which contain new concepts. These papers can’t be translated into English without inventing new terms in English. The whole untranslatability issue is purely a numbers game where the papers in English only vastly outnumber those in any other language and hence most of the novel concepts are in English alone.
    - pvaldes 10y ago
      Well, paraphrasing your post... Pick any scientific paper related with biodiversity at random. No other language other than latin (or maybe greek) has the terms and concepts required to write it - you can’t translate Oegopsida or Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Taxodiaceae: Conipherophytina) into english, or another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (lots of basic concepts in chemistry or physics developped between 17th and 19th centuries were written and expressed in french and deutsch without any effort), in fact you must use other languages. Consider writing the main parts of your work using math language. There is not much scientific articles or technical ideas developped exclusively in pure english.
      - danieltillett 10y ago
        You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin these days as the vocabulary just doesn't exist in these languages. Sure scientific papers borrow terms from other languages, but today you can really only write most papers in English - the required terminology and concepts are missing from most languages. There really is a world of ideas only accessible in English. As you rightly point out there is nothing about English that makes it suited for science inherently - it is just an accident of history. This does not change the fact that today the language of science is English and hence many scientific ideas are expressed exclusively in English.
        mablap 10y ago
        You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin You're comparing modern day English with languages that have died more than 1500 years ago. Your arguments are incoherent and suggest a serious lack of judgment.
        danieltillett 10y ago
        I think it would be more productive to read what I have actually written rather than personally attack me.
- sanoli 10y ago
  > Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers. Wait, I'm not sure if I agree with the rest of your post, but this last sentence is surely an exaggeration, no? You mean over 50% of human concepts that were ever communicated are only available to english speakers?
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Yes because so much of novel human knowledge is tied to science and technology. Sure there are millions of novels, movies, poems, etc in thousands of different languages, but the range of ideas contained within them is rather limited.
    - derriz 10y ago
      You know that English only became a lingua franca in the 20th century? Before that, hardly anything of scientific significance was expressed or published in English? The seminal works in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology were written in German, Latin, etc
      - danieltillett 10y ago
        Yes of course. But since 1945 the vast majority of papers have been written in English. I think people forget how much science has grown over the last 75 years to the point where everything written pre-1945 is a small minority of the scientific literature.
        m00n 10y ago
        Do you think that the ideas of Leibniz and Cauchy, that is differential and integral calculus, of Heisenberg and Einstein, that is Quantum mechanics and Relativity, of Curie, Mendelejew, Hahn, Bosch, ... basically, of any non-english speaking scientist with breakthrough insights, are not understood by English speaking scientists, when translated? What makes you believe people think about concepts "In English", when they are published in English? Certainly Feynman was thinking about QM in English, even though most of the concepts were developed in Norwegian and German. Also, I'm still waiting for a single example of an english named scientific concept, that is not understandable to a German/French expert in the field. Maybe you have at least _one_ example handy, claiming that "most scientific concepts" are of this type.

by sanoli 10y ago

danieltillett 10y ago

English is very interesting in that if a word makes sense to use (rather than a phrase) then English will borrow that word without hesitation. Actually because the language of science and technology is English there are lots of concepts that can’t be expressed in any other language. Sure any emotion a human can feel can be expressed in any language, but most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any language other than English. Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers.

mablap 10y ago
most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any language other than English. Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers. Please provide examples to support your baseless claim.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Pick any scientific paper at random. No other language other than English has the terms and concepts required to write the paper - you can’t translate most scientific papers into another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (many are written in other languages), just that we have settled on English as the language of science. The vast majority of new scientific papers are written in English and hence every new concept within them can’t be expressed in any other language since there are no corresponding vocabulary to map the new concept onto. You can of course make up a new term in an another language if you want, but in this is not done for the many new concepts since it is more productive to just work within English. Of course there are some papers that are written in a foreign language and which contain new concepts. These papers can’t be translated into English without inventing new terms in English. The whole untranslatability issue is purely a numbers game where the papers in English only vastly outnumber those in any other language and hence most of the novel concepts are in English alone.
  - pvaldes 10y ago
    Well, paraphrasing your post... Pick any scientific paper related with biodiversity at random. No other language other than latin (or maybe greek) has the terms and concepts required to write it - you can’t translate Oegopsida or Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Taxodiaceae: Conipherophytina) into english, or another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (lots of basic concepts in chemistry or physics developped between 17th and 19th centuries were written and expressed in french and deutsch without any effort), in fact you must use other languages. Consider writing the main parts of your work using math language. There is not much scientific articles or technical ideas developped exclusively in pure english.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin these days as the vocabulary just doesn't exist in these languages. Sure scientific papers borrow terms from other languages, but today you can really only write most papers in English - the required terminology and concepts are missing from most languages. There really is a world of ideas only accessible in English. As you rightly point out there is nothing about English that makes it suited for science inherently - it is just an accident of history. This does not change the fact that today the language of science is English and hence many scientific ideas are expressed exclusively in English.
      - mablap 10y ago
        You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin You're comparing modern day English with languages that have died more than 1500 years ago. Your arguments are incoherent and suggest a serious lack of judgment.
        danieltillett 10y ago
        I think it would be more productive to read what I have actually written rather than personally attack me.
sanoli 10y ago
> Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers. Wait, I'm not sure if I agree with the rest of your post, but this last sentence is surely an exaggeration, no? You mean over 50% of human concepts that were ever communicated are only available to english speakers?
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Yes because so much of novel human knowledge is tied to science and technology. Sure there are millions of novels, movies, poems, etc in thousands of different languages, but the range of ideas contained within them is rather limited.
  - derriz 10y ago
    You know that English only became a lingua franca in the 20th century? Before that, hardly anything of scientific significance was expressed or published in English? The seminal works in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology were written in German, Latin, etc
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      Yes of course. But since 1945 the vast majority of papers have been written in English. I think people forget how much science has grown over the last 75 years to the point where everything written pre-1945 is a small minority of the scientific literature.
      - m00n 10y ago
        Do you think that the ideas of Leibniz and Cauchy, that is differential and integral calculus, of Heisenberg and Einstein, that is Quantum mechanics and Relativity, of Curie, Mendelejew, Hahn, Bosch, ... basically, of any non-english speaking scientist with breakthrough insights, are not understood by English speaking scientists, when translated? What makes you believe people think about concepts "In English", when they are published in English? Certainly Feynman was thinking about QM in English, even though most of the concepts were developed in Norwegian and German. Also, I'm still waiting for a single example of an english named scientific concept, that is not understandable to a German/French expert in the field. Maybe you have at least _one_ example handy, claiming that "most scientific concepts" are of this type.