The use of English as the common language (lingua franca) for any discipline, not just philosophy, has its risks (and this would be true for any language, not just English). The author identifies three concerns (quoted):
- The current situation puts disproportionate burdens on non-native speakers.
- The nuances of ordinary language matter.
- Robust, partially separate traditions can nurture diversity of thought.
All quite true. Thinking and learning in different languages forces you to see the world differently and talk about it differently.
Case in point: in English, you can start a sentence without knowing where it's going to end. That's because things like tense and gender are relatively fluid. But in French (so I learned) what you really need to do is to frame the entire sentence first, before uttering the first word. What is the tense? What is the subject? Only then can you know the correct words to use. This is a different way of thinking, and causes you to think of sentences themselves differently.
Today: 0 Total: 21 [Direct link] [Share]
