Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 December 10

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December 10

Technical vocabulary of various languages

Are there any studies comparing how extensive the technical vocabulary of various languages are?

I read this and I was wondering if it were true.

Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they get done at all).

Benjamin (talk) 09:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know of any studies, but in my experience in a large translation agency, some languages (such as Spanish, German, and Russian) have very extensive technical vocabularies, and translators who are familiar with the vocabularies find translation between English and Spanish, German, or Russian to be relatively easy. Other languages (such as Italian and Khmer) don't have such extensive vocabularies, and if the language also does not like to import lots of English words, technical translations can be extremely difficult. Khmer sometimes will transcribe technical English terms into the Khmer alphabet, but more often just writes the English term in the English alphabet. Most Native American languages avoid using foreign terms and, instead, write descriptions of the terms using native vocabulary (so a Native American translator must find out the exact meaning of a term, then describe it using native words, often resulting in lengthy descriptive equivalents. There are a number of languages that (due to phonetic reasons and/or script differences which make it very difficult to adopt words from other languages, and yet which are so conservative that they do not accept the coining of new native terms) are forced to find existing native words to use for technical terms (languages such as Arabic and Chinese). Technical terminology is a huge problem for all languages, but especially for languages that have not been used much as a target language for the translation of English sources. —Stephen (talk) 16:51, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I see your point as a translator, but the problem as I understand it is different: let's suppose two Khmer rocket scientists are working together in a lab. What vocabulary would they use when talking to one another? --90.216.104.140 (talk) 17:10, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Khmer rocket scientists would speak Khmer, but use French or English for the technical terms. However, the French/English terms, though usually written in the Latin alphabet, would be pronounced as though spelling in the Khmer alphabet, which deforms French and English words in the extreme. For example, container would be pronounced "koŋtəɨnoa" (from English). Pickup is "piikəɨp" (English). Hydrogen would be pronounced "ʔiidroozaen" (from French), and Germany is pronounced "ʔaalləɨmɑŋ" (French). —Stephen (talk) 18:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

That's not a new issue at all; a century ago, the War of the Languages had split the Yishuv because a significant minority believed Hebrew was unsuitable as a language of technical instruction, lacking terms for most of the contemporary technical developments. At the time, the "worldwide technical language" had been German.

A living language, however, does always develop (or assimilate) vocabulary according to its users' needs; and by now, Hebrew has enough technical terms that Technion has no difficulties in conducting all its courses in Hebrew. (They do still prefer written communication to be in English, as otherwise the mix of RTL text with a lot of embedded LTR terms and formulae becomes very confusing to follow.)

Unsurprisingly, in communities where there are few hackers -- say, among the Eskimos -- the hacking-related vocabulary would be rather limited. This, however, isn't a property of a language per se, but of a community; as soon as there are Inuktun-speaking hackers talking to one another, they will in due course develop the hacking-related vocabulary, without even realizing. --90.216.104.140 (talk) 17:01, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I can say only for Russian. I never saw two Russians discussing computer matters in English. Probably, there may be some situations where they have to discuss in English to be understood by others, but in a private face-to-face conversation it is highly unlikely, only, maybe, if they are so assimilated that speaking English is easier for them (but in that case they are not entirely Russians, maybe, half-Russians).
However, the influence of English in computing and closely related fields is so immense that they would often use thousands of English terms, often transliterated into Cyrillic, in their speech. Sometimes they even do not transliterate at all, for example, in a case when they both are more acquainted with English documentation, that that is easier not to adapt English terms at all and use them as is. But in other fields, say, medicine or physics, that influence is much smaller or insignificant, even if there may be many recent English borrowings, Russians would mostly use their native terminology (note that Russian scientific and technical terminology has tens of thousands of borrowings from Latin, Greek, German, French, Dutch, Polish, even from Arabic, Persian and Turkic; but they are all well adapted and not seen as spontaneous ersatz vocabulary).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:26, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

This is all great information, but are there any sources?

Benjamin (talk) 11:38, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Have you seen our article on code switching? Loan word may also be relevant. These questions are studied in sociolinguistics. For example I read a paper about Vietnamese-Australian schoolchildren who spoke to their siblings in English when they arrived home from school. This may be relevant to your interest in technical vocabulary, because when talking about homework they would be remembering the lessons they had had during the day in English. They changed to Vietnamese at times, and the author concluded it was when they wanted to refer to the brother-sister relationship. There may have been less research done on work contexts than family ones. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:58, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

This article [1] does not directly address your question, but it comes close at times. You may find some more relevant work among the references there. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:17, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Programming languages like C, and operating systems functions like fork are English, so it makes sense for hackers to talk English. Martin. 93.95.251.162 (talk) 16:10, 14 December 2016 (UTC)