What is the best language to learn for people in the field of science?

Answer 1

Tricky question. Much of the writing about science was done in Latin for a long time, so Latin might be useful, in medical terminology, Greek seems to dominate. There is a great deal of technical writing in German as well, and French figures into the equation when you consider such people as the Curies. Good luck.

Answer 2

Interesting question. Almost all science is reported in English nowadays, even if the original work is done in whatever language is spoken by the researchers. So it's unlikely that you'd miss anything original if English were the only language you knew.

But if your interests are likely to take you back into the history of science, especially physics, I'd suggest German - because much of the work on the atomic nucleus was done by German scientists who fled Nazi Germany because they were Jewish or because they didn't like the direction that politics was taking.

Hope that helps. Good for you for asking the question.

Answer 3

German. There is a lot of work being published in German. Russian would be a second choice so that you would have access to the body of research that is being published in that language. Spanish or Mandarin would be a third option. Latin is pretty worthless as a language of science unless you are interested in reading only 17th century research. Learning a second language isn't about knowing the history of words, it's about being able to COMMUNICATE with another researcher.

Answer 4

Classical Latin, it is the mother of all romantic languages including Spanish, French, and Portugese. Learning latin is like learning several languages all at once. The declentions are also similar to Greek which is much easier to learn after having a foundation in Latin.

Answer 5

As the others have said, Latin is important for
terminology, etc. But if you need to read technical
journals, German and French are still the most
useful. Also, much scientific literature is written
in Russian and Chinese these days.

Answer 6

English & Latin. I see, you probably already know fluent English.

But Latin---definitely. So many words {especially medical terminology} derives from the Latin language.

Even if you just look at the periodic table of elements for example--a lot of the symbols are weird. Like 'Au' for Gold or 'K' for Potassium---it's because those symbols stand for the Latin word of that element, interestingly.

Surgeon's terminology: for example, "cardiovascular".
Cardio=heart
vascular=vessels.

Answer 7

Greek and Latin, since most of the scientific words are rooted from both languages. Example: Aero is Greek for air Biblio is Greek for book, Podi is foot (i think in both languages). Pedi is child, Cardio is Greek for heart

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To Jackie:

Cardio is the medical term used to reference the heart. From Greek kardia: heart. The Greek spelling using k is the reason for the usage of K in EKG (electrocardiogram).

Also used in reference to exercises and/or equipment intended for cardiovascular fitness and endurance training (aerobic exercise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardio

Answer 8

English is the internationl language. Everyone who is anyone know at lease some of it.

Answer 9

Well, if you know english already(hehe) then by far it is latin. Most of the name of the species of animals are in latin and other stuff is in latin too.

Answer 10

Medical doctors learn latin, that's what they write persciptions in.

But I would most likely say, french.