language for communication

[mhcrxlc at dir.mcc.ac.uk]

Lars Martin Fosse responds to:

>>If you restrict postings to the English language, then you merely produce
>>the result that some French or German scholars will not post because it
>>will be too time-consuming to do so. (Many who are fluent in reading
>>English cannot write English at speed.) This would be a loss to us all.

with:

>I doubt very much that serious French and German scholars would not post
>because it would be too time-consuming. If a Norwegian can learn how to
>communicate in English, so can the French and the Germans.

If a Norwegian can learn to communicate in English, then we can all learn
to communicate in Chinese. There is a large body of people in China we
could write for.

It is not a question of what we can do. It is a question of which
investments of our time we choose to make and how we are taught languages
in school. Undoubtedly any capable scholar could learn to be fluent in any
given language. But does he want to spend his time doing that.

>The important
>question is: How many in the world community of Indologists are able to read
>French and German (not to mention Russian and Italian) with ease? When I see
>bibliographies at the end of papers produced in India, there are hardly
>references to anything written by Germans or French scholars. This may
>partly reflect the state of the local libraries.

Surely this represents a failure to learn to communicate in French and German.

>There is, however, a
>Sanskrit World Conference coming up in January, and it might be an idea to
>discuss the question there, in a contest which is not dominated by
>Westernes. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons why Dumezil's work
>had trouble reaching the USA was that he wrote in French, which a large
>number of American scholars do <not> read with ease. That is a pity, because
>Dumezil was extremely important (no matter what you think of his ideas).

I do not know about American scholars, but British scholars certainly read
Dumezil in French as he was published. The reason they did not refer to him
much was because they did not rate his ideas very highly !

>To
>repeat myself: What it boils down to, is communication. If you choose to
>communicate in a language that a group of potential readers do not read, and
>refuse to use a language that the same group does read, then you are
>excluding them. So: Do you want to exclude the readers that don't read
>French or German?

That's absurd. By that argument the use of any language would involve a
decision to exclude the majority of the world that don't read that language
- even English isn't that widely read !

As far as I am concerned, contributions in Norwegian would be perfectly
welcome. (But I would reply in English!)

Lance Cousins

MANCHESTER, UK
Email: mhcrxlc at dir.mcc.ac.uk