[sabbatic13]

And your dad's alternative would be what? To balkanize science and engineering? To create dozens of separate islands of knowledge? To slow the spread of knowledge, because everything deemed significant has to be translated to and from 20 languages to gain general currency?

How is one or even a thousand persons' inability to learn another language an argument for how science should be practiced?

[dwaltrip]

The assumptions, the arrogance, the blame passing, the lack of understanding of contexts not your own... You are basically impling all non-english speakers should be so very ashamed that they are holding back broad human progress with their stupid insistency in continuing to use their native tongue. Which I find absurd. (Btw, I only speak English).

As technologists, maybe we could find solutions that, ya know, don't force massive, life altering requirements on billions of people?

[lucian1900]

Not ashamed, they may not have had the resources or opportunity to learn English. But as flawed as the language is, it has won.

It's not hard to speak at least two languages and one of them should be English.

There is no solution as good as the whole world being bilingual.

[sdm]

Science and engineering are already "balkanized" by language -- at least with respect to Mandarin, Russian, and German.

I remember in uni taking "German for technical and scientific reading" courses just for that purpose. It make much more grow the communities than shut most people out because they don't speak English.