which subject is least dominated by English?

robot sex machine   Sun Aug 30, 2009 12:21 am GMT
Which academic subject is least dominated by English? Only subjects which are international in nature.
In my opinion - music. I happened to go to the music library of my English speaking university and found that a massive amount of books are in Italian, French and German. Most of the music professors can at least read those three languages.
alnitak   Sun Aug 30, 2009 12:36 am GMT
How about religious theology. The preferred language probably depends on the religion:

Islam -- Arabic
Judiasm -- Hebrew
Hinduism -- Hindi?

etc.
sextronic turbo   Sun Aug 30, 2009 1:20 pm GMT
Rocket science.
Russian and German dominate here. In the future Chinese and Hindi.
bill t.   Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:10 pm GMT
A lot of science in general is published in German and Russian, especially in hard sciences like math, chemistry and physics, and engineering. English is still the major language here, but I wouldn't use the word dominant.

As for other subjects, I'd say literature, philosophy, history, culinary arts, viticulture, fashion, theatre, opera, dance (ex. ballet), and music theory and theology as already mentioned. English is only barely relevant in most of these unless you are in an English-speaking country.

The subjects English is most dominant in are the more modern ones, like computer science, economics and media studies, and anything involving business, international communication and the internet.
dominus   Sun Aug 30, 2009 10:41 pm GMT
<<A lot of science in general is published in German and Russian, especially in hard sciences like math, chemistry and physics, and engineering. English is still the major language here, but I wouldn't use the word dominant. >>


It WAS like that! Nowadays English does dominate these hard subjects. In a survey of German physicists 97% reported using English 'on an everyday basis'. In Russian top universities, the textbooks they use are mostly in English.
Xie   Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:40 am GMT
Hard to say. Most older subjects, maybe. You wouldn't normally still use English to study very old cultures.
bill   Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:48 pm GMT
<< It WAS like that! Nowadays English does dominate these hard subjects. In a survey of German physicists 97% reported using English 'on an everyday basis'. In Russian top universities, the textbooks they use are mostly in English. >>

I'll admit that I don't know that much about the status of Russian, but there are an enormous number of scientific journals and textbooks out there published in German, even nowadays. That has certainly been my experience at least (I finished my degree this past May). These articles may also be translated into English for a more international audience, but I was just trying to point out that it's not the only language actively used in these fields. Now that I think about it, I've also come across modern journals published in French, Spanish and even one Italian journal on atmospheric science if you can believe it.
i   Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:51 pm GMT
Why say it like that? Italy continues to be a major industrial and scientific power, even though always overshadowed by giants like Germany, USA and Japan.
yebat'   Tue Sep 01, 2009 12:45 am GMT
Disciplines in which German academics claim English as their working language (percentages)

Physics 98
Chemistry 83
Biology 81
Psychology 81
Maths 78
Earth Sciences 76
Medical Sciences 72
Sociology 72
Philosophy 56
Forestry 55
Vet. Sciences 53
Economics 48
Sports Sciences 40
Linguistics 35
Education 27
Literature 23
History 20
Classics 17
Theology 12
Law 8

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-elt-future.pdf