Is Scholarly Communication Possible in a So-called “Artificial” Language?

Important for the status of any language is its function as a scholarly language. Are “artificial” languages, i.e. “international planned languages”, available for such a function? This article demonstrates that they are. Among planned languages, language planning, and research on scholarly language there are several connections, particularly demonstrable through the example of Esperanto. This language, from as early as the beginning of the 20th century, has had available to it scholarly texts in journals and other publications, and oral scholarly discourse through individual communication among individual scholars and in the context of organizations and other communities of discourse on various subjects, today also web-based. Characteristics of the language, particularly its word-formation, tend to favor the flexible naming of notions and the creation of terms in line with the criteria of ISO/TC 37. Such stabilized scientific vocabulary is recorded in over 200 dictionaries covering some 90 fields. The Universal Esperanto Association seeks to coordinate work on terminology and collaborates with the principal international terminological institutions. Outside their own range of discourse, planned languages have served to stimulate work, for example, in decimal classification, in nomenclature, and in terminology science. There is a broad scholarly literature in the field

How Not to Reinvent the Wheel: The Essential Scholarly Literature in Interlinguistics and Esperantology

Studies of interlinguistics written in ethnic languages – particularly research on planned languages – are often insufficiently grounded in the essential scholarly literature. English-language studies frequently fail to consider scholarly literature in German, Russian, French, and other languages. An important part of this specialized literature is written in planned languages (particularly Esperanto) and all too frequently remains unknown. For lack of knowledge of actual planned-language praxis, misunderstandings arise, for example on the relations between a language and a language project, a language and a language community, language and culture, expressibility in planned languages, and so on. For scientifically valid studies, specialized materials written in planned languages (approximately 95 % of them in Esperanto) are essential. This article provides an overview of the principal accessible sources of scholarly literature on interlinguistics and Esperantology and, inter alia, gives information on specialized libraries and archives, bibliographies, major monographs, anthologies, conferences and conference proceedings, university studies and dissertations, periodicals, internet materials, and handbooks for interlinguistics specialists

Komunikacja w Europie – kilka aspektów polityki językowej

The Council of Europe and the European Union (EU) together declared 2001 to be the „European Year of Languages”. Since then, September 26 of each year has been celebrated as the “European Day of Languages”. These initiatives are indications that the significance of European language policy and the complex problems related to it have been receiving more and more attention. For present purposes, European language policy should be understood as consciously realized public influence on the status, use and spread of languages spoken in the EU. In this study, it is only possible to touch upon a few problems of this very broad field, including legal solutions, the languages and language knowledge of Europeans, practical language transfer, the costs of mulitilingualism and various language policy models.Rada Europejska i Unia Europejska (UE) wspólnie ogłosiły rok 2001 „Europejskim Rokiem Języków”. Od tego też roku 26. września corocznie w Europie obchodzony jest „Europejski Dzień Języków”. Inicjatywy te wskazują, że znaczenie europejskiej polityki językowej, złożone problemy i aspekty z nią związane są coraz częściej dostrzegane.Na potrzeby niniejszego artykułu przyjmijmy rozumienie europejskiej polityki językowej jako świadomie realizowanego publicznego wpływu na status, wykorzystanie i upowszechnianie języków używanych w UE. W niniejszym studium zajmiemy się zaledwie kilkoma aspektami tego szerokiego zagadnienia: rozwiązaniami prawnymi, językami i językową znajomością języków w Europie, praktycznym przekazywaniem języków, kosztami wielojęzyczności i różnymi modelami polityki językowej

Building bridges through science

WOS: 000415310800007PubMed ID: 29144972Science is ideally suited to connect people from different cultures and thereby foster mutual understanding. To promote international life science collaboration, we have launched "The Science Bridge'' initiative. Our current project focuses on partnership between Western and Middle Eastern neuroscience communities.Medical Research Council [MC_UP_1202/5