On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:38 PM, David Gerard<[email protected]> wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/world/asia/10iht-malay.html > > The Malaysian government has declared that science instruction will be > conducted in Bahasa rather than English. Parents, teachers and > professors are very unhappy because "English is the language of > science." > > This sort of thing affects the quality of our projects in languages > other than English. > > I'm not sure what to suggest, but it struck me as relevant to language > issues we face.
Let's try with linguistics... In slavistics is usual to write a paper in a native language + abstract in Russian, English or a native language of publication. Usually, all slavists know to read other Slavic languages. But, if I am interested in description of phonemic system of Serbian language, I am much more interested in cooperation with Japanese linguists. If I am interested in distinction between alveo-palatal consonants, i have more interests to cooperate with Hungarian and Chinese linguists. If I am interested in well described synthetic language to compare it with Serbian, I should work with classical philologists specialized in Latin. And if I am willing to make any kind of generalization of language characteristics, I am interested to work with any linguist specialized in any language. So, even a discipline with a lot of polyglots can't work without lingua franca. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
