Science: English is the leading language for communication

In the scientific community, German is being replaced by English to an increasing extent, which has serious consequences for research scientists and communication of their achievements. The colloquium "Scientific languages in the past and present", which was held at Bamberg University, was devoted to this subject. "German doesn't play a role any more in the scientific community outside the humanities", says Helmut Glück, the German scholar and organiser of the event. The conference focussed on such issues as the situation of the German language in various disciplines and also reviewed the impact on practical use of the language.

According to Glück, the German language has already died in most trade publications that concentrate on the natural and technical sciences and medicine. "The chemists are the last natural scientists who still publish a German trade magazine. This is possible because they have a terminology office of their own, with which the chemists' association aims to exercise German influence on the subject", the German scholar from Bamberg says. Theology, ancient history and, of course, German studies were the subjects where German is still most likely to be found. "There are, however, definite trends in associated disciplines like Romance studies to use English as well. Because Romance scholars are less and less proficient in the other Romance languages that are necessary to permit mutual communication", says the expert.

Glück thinks that increasing specialisation, particular in the natural and technical sciences, is the main reason for this development. "Since the individual areas of a discipline are becoming smaller and smaller and more and more specialised, the scientific communities whose members depend on a joint language to communicate with each other are shrinking too." The scientific publications in other languages, e.g. the former world language Russian, were similarly affected too. "There are still more than 1 000 trade magazines that appear in Russian, which is attributable to the imperial policy that the country used to adopt. The trend towards English and the debate about this are comparable there too all the same", predicts Glück.

The dominant language in the scientific community has changed several times in recent centuries. Whereas Latin was still the undisputed leader in the 17th century and all scientists were still proficient in Latin around 1800 too, publications in the early 19th century were mainly in English, French and German. "This can be traced back to the 16th century. Albrecht Dürer, for example, introduced such German terms as 'Kreis' or 'Würfel' in geometry at this time and contributed to the terminology required as a result", explains Glück. German had become one of the first three languages in the scientific community towards the end of the 19th century, which is reflected by German publications in Eastern Europe and even Japan. This was brought to an end by the boycott of the German scientific community after the First World War and, later on, following the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. "The decline of German in favour of English was most noticeable in the 60s", reports the German scholar from Bamberg.

The fact that German is continuing to be driven back steadily causes problems primarily to the scientists themselves, when medical magazines reject manuscripts submitted in German, for instance. "There are even arguments sometimes whether German titles may be quoted as references. If the research done by my neighbour is not registered any longer, this is more a sign of provincial narrow-mindedness than of globalisation, however," Glück points out by way of criticism. The loss of distinct terminologies in wide areas of the natural sciences and medicine, which made it very much more difficult to communicate scientific findings in national languages, was also deplorable. "If thinking had been done a number of years ago when tissue engineering was in the process of development and the German word 'Gewebetechnik' had been established as the proper term, we would have avoided a number of problems", says the linguist. A command of several languages would be a viable alternative to the commitment to English. "It would be good if research scientists could read several different languages. This depends, among other things, on appropriate education and political support too, however."

Quelle: Pressetext Deutschland
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