Modern languages used in science and math

[JasonArcher]

Hello. My name is JasonArcher, and I need some advice about choosing languages to study (other than Spanish, which I'm already studying).

I have studied STEM for many years in college. I would like to learn other languages in order to read scientific journals from countries whose primary language is not English. I already know that almost all of the high-quality scientific journals in the world are published in English. However, many scientists who come from non-English-speaking countries can't write in perfect English. They might make many spelling and grammar errors that make no sense unless I can refer to knowledge of the writers' native languages.

So, which language(s) should I consider learning?

[Lawyer&Mom]

Highly regarded scientific journals have editors. The English you read will be just fine. I wouldn’t fear grammar and spelling issues. Pick a language you are interested in.

[lichtrausch]

Mandarin or Japanese, both in terms of scientific output and the (relatively low) English level among their scientists.

[smallwhite]

They might make many spelling and grammar errors that make no sense unless I can refer to knowledge of the writers' native languages.

You know you're a language nerd when you learn a language just in case someone...

[verdastelo]

I spent several minutes thinking how to answer. A bulleted list of languages will not do justice to what I want to say. The very term, STEM, is contemporary. And from what I have read, "science" in the English speaking world is a subset of German Wissenschaft or Russian наука which tend to include scholarship in social sciences as well. So this 340-page book of Notes on the History of Chinese Literature is a work of science in Russia but probably not in the English speaking world. In this broad sense, scientific literature is being written in several modern languages including French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese.

In the narrow sense, which includes only hard sciences and mathematics, most literature in the past 50 years has a tendency to first appear in English because the United States is the largest economy in the world and spends a lot on research. Almost all the prestigious journals are anglophone. There are a few exceptions, such as Alexander Grothendieck's œuvre Éléments de géométrie algébrique which hasn't been completely translated into English despite being considered advanced and Nicolas Bourbaki's volumes of Éléments de mathématique which are first published in French. But the overall trend is clear: English has a significant lead and the most visibility. Thankfully, the world and science aren't 50 years old.

One of my dreams, before I die, has been to read Lev Landau's 10-volume Курс теоретической физики (Course of Theoretical Physics) in Russian and then read Einstein's papers in their original German. When quantum mechanics first appeared the 1930s German was the leading language of science. It might be interesting for you to read some papers from that era in the original. Fast forward to our times, I think most cutting edge research is first published in English. A case in point are the works of Shinichi Mochizuki which are probably only available in English. He is a Japanese mathematician. His work on number theory made headlines in popular science magazines several years ago. Having said that, not everyone writes in English.

Published last month, 量子力学講義ノート of 関口 雄一郎 is an almost 600-page tome on quantum mechanics. It's probably a textbook for university students. It means even in 2020, at least some scientists are publishing significant works in languages other than English. Returning to your question, what languages can you learn to read about contemporary maths and science? I'm afraid I have only two in mind: Russian and Chinese. Others can expand the list but I will wager on these two because:

• Russia (or Soviet Union) and China either heavily invested in science or are investing in science in the past 50 years.
• In both languages I have seen academic search engines (akin to Google Scholar). For Russian it's КиберЛенинка and for Chinese it's 百度学术

If you are keen to explore more, I would suggest Michael Gordon's Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English. Although I have skimmed through the book, I seriously doubt his research abilities given that he is a monolingual English speaker. Nonetheless, the book provides a great overview to anyone interested.

A second (and quicker) way is to use the language dropdown on Google Scholar to find natural science journals in multiple languages.

Good luck!

EDIT. Two typos fixed.

[tiia]

I'd say it's impossible to give a general and unambiguous answer. Apart from English it highly depends on what kind of science you're interestend in. Now there are of course certain languages that have or used to have lots of research. But in the end it still may not be the most relevant language for you. I suggest you'd think more about your specific field, then look out where the research is done and make your decision based on that.

When writing my diploma thesis, I realised that in my field some relevant research had been conducted in the Netherlands. There was interesting material, that was available in Dutch only. Nevertheless, under normal circumstances no one would suggest you to learn Dutch for science. Just in my case it might have made some sense.

[yong321]

If the research subject is any of STEM, there's really not much need to know a language other than English. But knowing another language somewhat helps in non-essential cases.

(1) When you go to an international conference, verbally communicating in the other speaker's native language greatly helps you understand his ideas. Language skills are important here but not so in reading their publications because they generally write better than speak and because their English publications are edited by journal editors.

(2) Some first-hand news, including some science-related, may be published in a language other than English first. A recent case is Italian researchers' finding that SARS-CoV-2 viruses are losing their virility. When I first read it on 05/28, it was available in Italian only (or maybe I didn't search hard enough).

(3) If your research needs to review the history of the subject and has to go back to before WWII, knowing a language other than English may help reveal some facts or ideas the English source doesn't cover well. Many years ago, I did a literature review on an environmental science project. Some articles were written in German, but I didn't know German so I only briefly mentioned the authors and the titles of their papers.

As to what language to study, it depends on your need. The points I listed may be of some value as a reference.

[JasonArcher]

Thank you all for your input.

[Cainntear]

On the point of handling weird imported turns of phrase, well, there's a hell of a lot of different languages out there.

Maybe you're better thinking in terms of language families rather than individual languages, as a lot of the idiosyncracies are shared across related languages.

For example, speakers of the Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian etc) have a tendency to certain errors to each other, and the speakers of the Slavic languages have similar problems to each other.

I don't speak Portuguese, for example, but I'm more comfortable teaching English to Portuguese students than to Chinese or Japanese ones because I understand better why they make certain errors, thanks to my knowledge of other Romance languages.