How did English become the language of science ?

[istanbulin]

An article from PRI (Public Radio International, Minneapolis based organization) explains "how English become the language of science?". It has some interesting unknown/forgotten points.

Full text : http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-06/how-did-english-become-language-science

If you look around the world in 1900, and someone told you, ‘Guess what the universal language of science will be in the year 2000?’ You would first of all laugh at them because it was obvious that no one language would be the language of science, but a mixture of French, German and English would be the right answer, said Michael Gordin.
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Gordin says that English was far from the dominant scientific language in 1900. The dominant language was German.
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“So the story of the 20th century is not so much the rise of English as the serial collapse of German as the up-and-coming language of scientific communication,” Gordin said.
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After World War I, Belgian, French and British scientists organized a boycott of scientists from Germany and Austria. They were blocked from conferences and weren't able to publish in Western European journals.
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The second effect of World War I took places across the Atlantic in the United States. Starting in 1917 when the US entered the war, there was a wave of anti-German hysteria that swept the country.

“At this moment something that’s often hard to keep in mind is that large portions of the US still speak German,” Gordin said.

In Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota there were many, many German speakers. World War I changed all that.

“German is criminalized in 23 states. You’re not allowed to speak it in public, you’re not allowed to use it in the radio, you’re not allowed to teach it to a child under the age 10,” Gordin explained.

The Supreme Court overturned those anti-German laws in 1923, but for years that was the law of the land. What that effectively did, according to Gordin, was decimate foreign language learning in the US.

“In 1915, Americans were teaching foreign languages and learning foreign languages about the same level as Europeans were," Gordin said. "After these laws go into effect, foreign language education drops massively. Isolationism kicks in in the 1920s, even after the laws are overturned and that means people don’t think they need to pay attention to what happens in French or in German."

This results in a generation of future scientists who come of age in the 1920s with limited exposure to foreign languages.

That was also the moment, according to Gordin, when the American scientific establishment started to take over dominance in the world.

“And you have a set of people who don’t speak foreign languages,” said Gordin, “They’re comfortable in English, they read English, they can get by in English because the most exciting stuff in their mind is happening in English. So you end up with a very American-centric, and therefore very English-centric community of science after World War II.”

 

[leverhead]

I wonder if in 2100 it will still be. If a good translator doesn't come along soon, a universal language would be nice. The world is getting pretty small.

 

[deluxestogie]

There is a "universal" language. It's Mandarin, spoken by over 14% of all people on earth--more than twice the percentage of the number two language, which is Spanish.

Take a breath, and have a look at the table on this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

Most Americans who bother to study a language other than English tend to pick from Spanish (a high ranking in terms of the number who speak it) or from a small number of very minor or archaic languages.

Bob

 

[Grumpa]

Interesting article but I disagree with the last three paragraphs. The scientists who came of age in the 1920s had to have a working knowledge of French and/or German because most of the basic research being done in the world was done in those two countries. (England was doing a fair amount too) In the 1920s American science was still in an infant stage so it could hardly "take over dominance in the world". American engineering was top shelf but science was not.

It was not until the late 1930s and early '40s that American science took off because of the political situation in Germany. A lot of the basic research was done by the Jewish academics which Hitler drove out of the country. In the 1940s, of course, the Manhattan project jump started the research community in this country especially with the influx of the ousted scientists.

The last paragraph is true but for misstated reasons. American science dominated after WWII because there was not much science happening in Europe after the war because it was in such poor shape. The advent of the Cold War also continued to drive basic science. Further, the American business establishment began to see the value in research and funded science at increasing rates.

 

[istanbulin]

You may read the full text here : http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-06/how-did-english-become-language-science, I've also added it before the very basic summary/quotation above. There's also the full interview record in the page.

I'm not knowledgeable about the US history of science but I think Gordin who is a professor of the history of science at Princeton and writing a book on that subject knows something.

 

[BarG]

Don't forget to take into account the outcome of the world wars. Things could have been much different. How do they say , the victors get to write history. I am sure that has a bearing on this discussion which may or may not have been included in the article. My thoughts are not meant to take away from the pure genius of other nationalities, just a change in attitude corresponding to the times.