This Article  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

D. G. C.

Arch Ophthalmol. 1965;73(5):609-610.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The "Curse of Babel" is what Duke-Elder has called our commitment to multilingual communications. The beauty of individual tongues, so important for the appreciation of literature and to some extent of art, has little to commend itself to science where directness of expression is of supreme importance. It was not a happy day for the scientist when mediaeval man turned away from Latin, the then common language of science, in favor of more secular means of communication. Nor have the several attempts to restore a common tongue in the form of Esperanto or other hybrids made more than symbolic impact.

To those of us brought up in an English-speaking country, the prospect of using English as a universal language of science is pleasing and possibly logical. In India, English is the language of communication among the provinces and Japan's scientific journals are published in English, as well as in Japanese. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?