Sure in some languages some concept can be expressed more subtly or poetically, but the concept can be expressed provided the assumed knowledge is present. It is the lack of assumed cultural knowledge that prevents these Japanese expressions from making sense in English, not that they can’t be expressed in English in principle.
That's an extraordinary statement; how many languages do you speak? In my home we speak a melange of three, different ratios depending on who is speaking to whom. And mixed in are other words that my wife or I acquired from other languages used when younger. Some concepts are just simpler or more intense in one language than another. Even though I have been speaking English from birth, use it every day, and live in an English speaking country, there are some things that are simply not natural in it. It would be like trying to write Lisp code using C -- possible (there are lisp compilers that emit C), but painful.
Your Lisp - C analogy is not a bad one (I would have used assembler as the base rather than C). Sure there are some languages that are able to solve some problem more efficiently or elegantly than assembler, but there is no program that can’t (in principle) be written in assembler. There are however many programs that can be written in assembler that can’t be written in Lisp.
To continue my provocative thesis then you can think of English as the assembler of human thought :)
Kind of like schadenfreude is now known to English speakers as schadenfreude. You can explain what it means, but there's no direct equivalent that's as easy to bring up.
From my own experience, I found that there's no direct equivalent to "disturbing" in Polish. There are many similar words (equivalents of "shocking" and other), but they just don't have the same feeling associated with them.
The concepts that can't be expressed in all languages are those that are abstract and technical. A nice simple example of this is in some Australian Aboriginal languages there are no words for numbers of objects higher than 3 (they just become many). It really is impossible to translate the number 14 into these languages as the corresponding concept just doesn't exist.
Of course, I use them all the time. I'll give you a couple of silly, yet profound examples. In German and Marathi there are different words for the droppings (crap) of different animals. In fact in German there's a book that teaches the kids different words. Unlike the highly developed squeamishness of the English language around body functions, you might use one of these words to describe something non-scatalogical (say, some dropped bolts under a piece of machinery) Köttel which includes in one word that they are small, scattered, left by some small creature (i.e. by someone careless or simpleminded -- probably insulting yourself or someone else you're talking about) -- something that can be explained in English but by the time you've done so it's not worth it.
Or an example from English: because of the French invasion, English has different words for animals in the field (e.g. swine and pig) and on the table (pork). At home we'll use cow, Kuh, and vache (always humorously) as well as beef or "hamburger" in an English sentence just to emphasize different ways in which the animal is used in different cultures.
Agricultural roots are still current German and Marathi in a way not true in English, again due to the Norman invasion.
(oh yeah, another great German example is the different words for snot depending on its consistency).
German has a rich ontology of earth moving apparatus, and each kind of machine (e.g. Löffelbaggnr) has a descriptive term that even kids know and can understand. If that exists in English I have not seen it (and I've spent some time in construction) except presumably to particular specialists.
At the opposite end, in French you can't say shallow (only peu profond -- "a small depth") which has so much semantic richness it makes the term "shallow" shallow. In general, wordplay in English is pretty thin gruel compared to what you can get away with in French, or even German. Speaking of that the very structure of Arabic lets you say things with a richness (kitab vs katib) that is I find (and I have been speaking English in English speaking countries for more than 40 years) inexpressible in English.
> To continue my provocative thesis then you can think of English as the assembler of human thought
I enjoy speaking English but this statement is hardly true.
The concepts that can't be translated are all highly technical concepts from the cutting edge of science and technology. These often lack the vocabulary in other languages to enable them to be expressed in that language because the limited number of people that understand them only communicate to each other about them in English. There are a very large number of these scientific concepts hence there are a large number of concepts that can only be expressed in English.
Brainf* may be turing complete, but I would certainly prefer to use a more ordinary language.
In practice this requires translating a significant amount of all scientific knowledge from English into the target language (lets pick Swahili for example). Because this is such a huge job with little return, scientists just all work in one common language and for historical reasons this is English.
Of course further away from the cutting edge the easier it is to explain concepts in a non-English language which is why science can be taught to undergraduates in a language other than English. Once you are dealing with the primary literature this becomes very difficult.
It seems strange to me to put English on all that much of a pedestal though. I mean, aren't many of the cutting-edge words recently neologisms anyway? (possibly named after someone)
Like, "anti-deSitter space", deSitter is iirc a guy's name, and anti could be translated or left alone if it is recognized in the language in question, and the word space could be translated, so I don't see what the problem would be there.
I mean I don't really know any cutting edge science because, uh, I'm not a scientist. But, from wikipedia, I'm trying to see if I can remember anything that seems like it would be particularly hard to translate and nothing comes to mind quickly? I suppose I could look at wikipedia articles on new topics in other languages and see what ones are missing or have many english words in them?
Any scientific concept can be translated into any language in principle, it is just that in practice nobody does - well at least until the concepts filter down to the undergraduate level.
You will really find it impossible to be a professional scientist if you can’t read and write English these days (speaking is less important). In the past if you could not read and write Latin you couldn’t discuss the latest scientific concepts, now that role is played by English. A very large percentage of all concepts are now scientific concepts and hence accessible only to English speakers (well readers).
Actually because the language of science and technology is English there are lots of concepts that can’t be expressed in any other language. Sure any emotion a human can feel can be expressed in any language, but most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any language other than English. Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers.
most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed
in any language other than English. Out of the total
number of human concepts that have ever been communicated,
the majority are only available to English speakers.
It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (many are written in other languages), just that we have settled on English as the language of science. The vast majority of new scientific papers are written in English and hence every new concept within them can’t be expressed in any other language since there are no corresponding vocabulary to map the new concept onto. You can of course make up a new term in an another language if you want, but in this is not done for the many new concepts since it is more productive to just work within English.
Of course there are some papers that are written in a foreign language and which contain new concepts. These papers can’t be translated into English without inventing new terms in English. The whole untranslatability issue is purely a numbers game where the papers in English only vastly outnumber those in any other language and hence most of the novel concepts are in English alone.
Pick any scientific paper related with biodiversity at random. No other language other than latin (or maybe greek) has the terms and concepts required to write it - you can’t translate Oegopsida or Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Taxodiaceae: Conipherophytina) into english, or another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages.
It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (lots of basic concepts in chemistry or physics developped between 17th and 19th centuries were written and expressed in french and deutsch without any effort), in fact you must use other languages. Consider writing the main parts of your work using math language. There is not much scientific articles or technical ideas developped exclusively in pure english.
As you rightly point out there is nothing about English that makes it suited for science inherently - it is just an accident of history. This does not change the fact that today the language of science is English and hence many scientific ideas are expressed exclusively in English.
You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical
Greek or Latin
There is no discussion to be had. You are wrong. If you cannot accept the basic fact that any concept can be translated into any language (efficiency notwithstanding) then fine, just don't pretend you want to engage in "civilised discussion".
Confrontation is not a personal attack. The arguments you gave (and still support) are evidence of someone who is either trolling or has not seen the world. Honest question: do you speak/read multiple languages?
I think you can’t accept that there are many concepts that can’t be expressed in any language other than English. I am a scientist by background, trained in multiple fields for over 20 years, and yet I only have an understanding of a tiny fraction of all the scientific concepts out there (I can’t say how low, but well under 0.01%).
The vast majority of concepts (distinct ideas) that I personally know are scientific. With almost all the scientific concepts I know it is not possible to communicate to someone about the concept in any language other than English because the background concepts are missing from other languages. This is not because English is inherently superior to any other language, just a consequence of English being the common language of science.
You see this when you go to a scientific conference - people who speak a common language other than English will chit-chat to each other in their own language, but when you hear them talking to each other about science it either totally in English, or a hybrid where ever second word is English - there is often so much English in these conversations that I can follow along even when I have no understanding of the base language.
I think you can’t accept that there are many concepts that
can’t be expressed in any language other than English.
You are right that at conferences people speak English, and we speak English in group meetings for the simple reason that it's the common denominator. There is no other reason. We have scientific discussions in French and English, some have them in German or Arabic, it doesn't matter because they're all equally capable of describing scientific thought.
I think the point you're trying to make is that the scientific vocabulary in some languages, in some scientific fields, sometimes doesn't keep up with that of English. This I would concede to you. But usually, just like English does, the other languages simply borrow the new words (or craft the usually obvious equivalents using greek/latin or whatever). This has nothing to do with a language's inherent capacity of describing concepts, as you maintain. This argument is a much weaker form than that which you propose.
Any concept (and all the required prerequisite concepts) that have not been translated to the new language can’t be communicated in that language. Nothing more.
The only interesting aspect of all this is that it makes a large chunk of human thought only able to be communicated effectively in one language. It would probably would have been ideal to have settled on a synthetic language designed specifically for science communication (mathematics is part of the way there), but history didn’t turn out that way.
> The vast majority of new scientific papers are written in English and hence every new concept within them can’t be expressed in any other language since there are no corresponding vocabulary to map the new concept onto.
Non sequitur. But how about _you_ provide an example of a non-translatable concept in an English paper. Should not be hard: 'Just pick any scientific paper at random.'
I'm sorry to say but you're full of it if you believe what you wrote. It's an absurdity only someone who has never travelled or been exposed to the world could say.
Wait, I'm not sure if I agree with the rest of your post, but this last sentence is surely an exaggeration, no? You mean over 50% of human concepts that were ever communicated are only available to english speakers?
What makes you believe people think about concepts "In English", when they are published in English? Certainly Feynman was thinking about QM in English, even though most of the concepts were developed in Norwegian and German.
Also, I'm still waiting for a single example of an english named scientific concept, that is not understandable to a German/French expert in the field. Maybe you have at least _one_ example handy, claiming that "most scientific concepts" are of this type.
Of course German or French scientists can understand modern scientific papers because they all speak English. I have met thousands of scientists who's first language is not English and not a single one can't read English.
As for an example I literally picked the first papers I found on NCBI. Written by a Chinese team in English - good luck translating this paper into any other language [1].
Your premise seems to be that all languages are 'Turing-equivalent': Given enough time+patience you can "explain" the meaning of every expression in every other language. To be honest, a book that wastes my time "explaining" concepts from the language it was originally written in is not a book I would consider fun.
I hope you can agree, that describing a feeling is not the same as actually feeling it. But you don't accept that there are words that evoke a feeling in a native speaker, that are not evoked by reading a translation in another language?
There are already several examples of phrases in this thread that can only clumsily be explained in English, and some of them are for exactly this reason already used by English speakers. The amount of scientific publications on indivual pieces of literature should also tell you that language as art is more than describing things.
Btw, your example of scientific papers is entirely besides the point because their purpose precisely is to just describe something, instead of evoking feelings or images in the readers mind, tapping into his stream of associations/values/lifelong cultural traditions etc. You also claim that _all_ human thoughts in history are "rather limited" when compared to modern "scientific papers". This is trolling, I hope.
Finally, the fact that you make out your own language as the lingua franka of all humanity does not do much good to your argument, which has a priori nothing to do with a specific language. Rather, it makes you look stereotypical Western-centric.
Well, no shit? The only language you speak is English. Any concepts that are foreign or difficult to explain in English would probably be out of your realm of understanding.
The question discussed in this thread is _not_: Would it be beneficial to have all scientific papers in one language? It is: Would it be beneficial to have all literature, discussions, jokes, poems and songs in one language. A question, that Newton's work and the amount of NSF funded papers in 2015 has absolutely no relation to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89l%C3%A9ments_de_g%C3%A9o...
The non-mathamtical language used in mathamatics papers is easily translated, but understanding the maths is impossible without the required background and it can't be translated into any natural human language. Maths uses a synthetic symbolic language which mathematicians around the world share allowing them to communicate - in the natural sciences we use English instead.
And all turing-complete programming languages are technically equivalent; what's your point?
Even the words "science" and "technique" and "compute." Latin and French. Basic stuff like "icon." Greek. "Algebra" and "alcohol" and some other words that start with "al-"; Arabic.
I could go on to force the point but it already feels bizarre having to point out the obvious..
If English can wantonly borrow from other languages then pretend it's the only language that can express these things, why can't other languages borrow those words from English and pretend they're a part of them?
For a whole series of historical reasons English has become the international language of science resulting in most new concepts only being expressible in English. We could of course change to a new language, but we would need to make up new terms to map all the existing concept onto in this new language. It might happen in the future, but right now there is no major effort to move science from English.
Again you keep insisting that certain vocabulary doesn't exist in other languages, right after I provided some examples of vocabulary that do/did not exist in English!
If a language decides to incorporate, say, "science" into its vocabulary, does that make it any more limited than English when English itself took the word from French/Latin?
The argument in this thread was never about vocabulary, as all languages have been borrowing from each other since forever and are free to keep doing so. English does not have a trademark on words, especially ones that it itself took from other languages.
The initial point was that you lose nuance, intent, conciseness and artistic value. Take "throwing star" versus "shuriken", or "raw seafood" against "sushi." Does English have words for those objects or concepts? "Throwing star" is a clumsy phrase that has to be disambiguated from a solar star, or is it a celebrity known for his or her throwing skills?
Many poems, jokes or idioms fall apart right away when translated literally, or lose their punch or intended effect when "explained" in another language. The world would be an insanely dull and boring place with just one language.
Um, yes. It has the words "shuriken" and "sushi". We didn't invent those words, but we found them useful, so we kept them.
Presumably, if the cultures that used lots of shuriken and ate lots of sushi had been English-speaking, they would still have invented words for them.
Similarly, it might be said that a human language that doesn't affect your world-view is not worth learning. The language is the door to the culture.
One of the strengths of English is that it adapts by assimilation from other language; if it were the only language around it would stagnate.
There is nothing inherently superior about English as a language (other than it being my native language), just that it is the common language of science and so it is the language in which the majority of new concepts are communicated.
German has "Seiendes" x "Sein". French has "l'étant x l'étre". English has just "being"; and then people think Heidegger is gibberish.