It is often said that English is the language of science. Indeed, scientists from all over the world receive their training in English-speaking countries and publish their work in high-profile journals, most of which are English or American.
Sanskrit was the language of our philosophers, our scientists, our mathematicians, our poets and playwrights, our grammarians, our jurists, etc.
When people are engaged in science, the language of communication they use tries to be more precise and consistent. Science often introduces technical words with specific meanings and also gives scientific meaning to words that may have different usage in everyday language.
Science is based on collaboration between people from different cultures. Due that, it is really important that scientists can communicate trough a common language.
We therefore see that language can play a particularly subtle and active role in the way scientists communicate with each other and the ways in which new ideas are developed, or can be blocked.
English is the universal form of communication in science. Although many countries still publish journals in their native tongue, English is currently the best way to share one's research findings with scientists in other parts of the world.
Because most major scientific journals are published in English, success is related to publishing in this language.
Language learning helps improve people's thinking skills and memory abilities. Bilingual students concentrate better, ignoring distractions more effectively than those who only speak one language.
Never in the past has a language dominated scientific communication as English currently does. The result is that scientists whose first language is not English face several barriers to participating in science and accessing knowledge.
Latin is useful as a scientific and technical language because it is a written rather than spoken language and is therefore immune to vocal anomalies, vowel changes, consonant variations, and colloquial modification.
The German language was an important language of science from the late 19th century through the end of World War II.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
HAL/S is an aerospace programming language that NASA extensively uses to build flight software for NASA space shuttle programs. The language focuses on satisfying virtually all of the flight software requirements of the space shuttle.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language.
Our results suggest that language abilities appear to have a significant influence on cognitive test performance, whereas test characteristics do not influence performance, after accounting for language abilities.
More Brain Cells
Another study revealed bilingualism increases “gray matter” — the number of cell bodies in the brain. People who speak both English and Spanish, for example, are likely to have more brain cells than people who just speak English. This, of course, suggests a healthier brain and better intelligence.
Our vast intelligence also allows us to have language, a system of communication that uses symbols in a regular way to create meaning. Language gives us the ability communicate our intelligence to others by talking, reading, and writing.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
More than three-quarters of scientific papers today are published in English—and in some fields it is more than 90 percent, according to data compiled by Scott Montgomery in his book Does Science Need a Global Language?.
Lojban (pronounced [ˈloʒban] ( listen)) is a logical, constructed, human language created by the Logical Language Group which aims to be syntactically unambiguous. It succeeds the Loglan project. la . lojban.