Dear Martin,
I had a similar urge to post the following:
“Et pour les Flamands la meme chose”
but initially did not, due to historical inaccuracy, my recent mellowing, and the fact that the “hat” is nowhere to be seen on real keyboards.
> Este livro parece muito interessante, e relacionado aos meus interesses na minha linha de pesquisa, especialmente em matématica construtiva. É uma pena que não leia Francês. Versões em português, ou espanhol, ou inglês me seriam muito uteis.
>
> Mas talvez possa entender um pouco na lingua original. Vou tentar, pois, como disse, parece muito interessante.
>
> Atentamente,
> M. H. E.
It is striking how close Portuguese/Spanish are to French (my second language), in the same way the Scandinavian languages (bar Finnish) are close to Dutch (my first), when written.
Anyway, on to more on-topic matters:
Firstly, I recently came across an article named “Intuinionnisme 84” (French) discussing the connection between Brouwer’s intuitionism
and Nonstandard Analysis. This text, as most of its ilk, is only available in the most academic French, which even I have trouble reading. If we can agree that articles should
have an as wide as possible audience, can we agree that the language of The Bard won over all others, and act accordingly?
Secondly, the above is reflected in the fact that I could not find said article in “less than legal” areas of the internet, as people only
seem to care enough to scan English (or Russian) articles/books. Case-in-point.
Thirdly, there is an anecdote about Kreisel giving a talk at some LC, and quoting something in German with the pretext “This can only be said in German”.
Later, others proceeded to quote their pet peeves in their respective mother tongues (Norwegian and Japanese I gather from the stories). While I agree
that translation is difficult, these things end up becoming you-know-what contests and reek of nationalism anyway. Brouwer’s PhD thesis has a decent
English translation, and Dutch is only spoken in 1.6 countries (if that).
Best,
Sam