Mathematics not in english

I'm from germany.

Did you know english before/independently of studying math?

Yes, here english is mandatory in school. But I think that education wouldn't be enough for me to understand english without problems. I guess what helped more were a whole lot of english media I started to consume after school. I feel really confident in understanding english nowadays (don't need to speak or write in english often so I'm not that confident in that regard).

Have you been in a situation where language has been a barrier, even if small, to communicate with people?

Sometimes when talking in english I won't know some words. I then need to find a way to talk my way around it. For example I will usually not remember the word 'cucumber' (or the name of any other vegetable). I guess that's because I usually never need to use that word (most english stuff I read is about vector bundles or magic fantasy worlds - both aren't really known to include a wide cast of cucumbers). But it's a bit emberassing if I notice midtalk that I don't know a word which should be trivial. Funny is that I know the meaning when reading it - I just can't remember.

What about resources like videos, textbooks, notes, etc? Would you have preferred if they were in your mother language?

Yes and no. I notice that it's harder for me to understand english math texts. Only slightly but I need to pay a little bit more attention when reading. So I think I would be faster if the texts were in german. On the other hand I prefer that research is done in one language hopefully most researchers speak. And then it's easier to inderstand research papers if you already know the terminology. For example the mathematical object 'field' ('Feld') is here called the german equivalent of 'body' ('Körper'). If I only knew the german word and would then read research papers I would need to figure out what the mean by field. There are more examples to this. Really annoying: A sheaf is called a 'Garbe' in german while a gerbe is still a 'Gerbe'.

Do you think a large(r) math community in your language would be benefitial to* you?

I guess not since I'm confident in (at least understanding) english. For others maybe, especially for beginners with university math it's hard(er) to find good resources in german discussing those topics. So people to discuss these topics with before you will eventually learn math english out of necessity would be a great help for them I think.

Math books in Russian are great. I didn't have any necessity to use English books at all. Some English books are interesting, really enjoyed them, but not mandatory.

I had limited English at the start of my career, so I always tried to use books in Spanish or Portuguese. Using math books in English actually helped me quite a lot improving my English, but when the time of going into a PhD came, there was no way around, so I had to practice a lot in order to fulfill the minimum requirements to apply abroad. That said, when I arrived to my destination country, my English was still very limited, so I forced myself to engage in conversations, give talks, and so on. It took me like solid two years living in an English speaking country to feel comfortable with my spoken English. At the beginning it was very tough tho, ngl. In Brazil for instance there is a big thing for making cheap, quality and accessible education, so there are a loooot of resources in Portuguese. Many Spanish speakers benefit a lot from that in the early stages of their careers. I think while people should work on their English if they want to pursue an academic career, language shouldn't be a barrier to get into math. We need more resources in different languages.

German here,
I knew English well enough before applying to university, both being a germanic language made learning easier of course. Resources are plenty in German as well (special thanks to Buri).

I had basic ("mid-level") English proficiency when starting the university. These days I'm practically living on the (English-speaking part of the) internet and English is a second nature.

Up to university levels, there is material (textbooks, lecture notes) in the local language. From starting your PhD at the latest, you are implicitly assumed to understand English. It probably helps that math textbook English is usually simpler than general English.

A few decades back learning Russian was mandatory for everybody here, and there was a large amount of Russian textbooks (either original or English books translated to Russian) available cheaply - at some point I contemplated learning Russian just because of this.

Communicating: these days everybody understands English and mixing English words into the local language is perfectly ok. Of course there must be a few students struggling, but it is more-or-less expected that you learn English if you want to study math at higher levels. Most notions have a corresponding word in the local language (in case of latin/greek origin, often sounding very similar), though as you get closer to current research, these often start to be ridiculous. But generally people understand both versions, so if you don't remember one you can just use the other.

Videos: I like if there are English subtitles, especially when for example it's more a freeform discussion when sometimes it can be hard to get a word or sentence here and there. But in general I prefer text over videos.

The math community is small enough that it makes sense to standardize to a common language, which these days happen to be English. Maybe for larger languages like Spanish or Portuguese it makes more sense to have more native material, I cannot really relate to that.

I have a question in return: Do algebraic geometers really read SGA, EGA and all those huge, inpenetrable and French-only volumes? Do all of them learn French just because of this? Or only French algebraic geometers read those. Or maybe not even them? :)

I'm Italian and I'm a researcher in CS. I'm 57 so my experience is not recent.

I arrived at the university without really knowing English. I did study it 3 years in middle school, but then I forgot it when I studied 5 years German in high school. Only because choosing German as foreign language was the way to get the best math professor in the school. I hated German language and I forgot it completely as soon I finished high school.

When I studied CS (and some math, like algebra, linear algebra, analysis, probability, numerical analysis) at the uni I was lucky that most of the reference books were only available in English, so I was forced to learn it by reading it.

In that period I also played a lot of textual adventures on my Commodore Vic20 and 64 and also that helped. Like The Hobbit and Zork, if somebody is old enough to remember them.

I was also a fan of P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler so I started reading their books in original, which was very challenging and slow at the beginning.

Anyway, reading technical English was not really a problem.

Nowadays I read all my fiction in English at the same speed and ease with which I read in Italian. I've probably read a thousands novels in English, mainly mystery.

Unfortunately I have a lot doubts about grammar when I have to write in English since I lack formal studies.

I'm also a very poor speaker because my pronounce it usually tentative and often approximate, since for various reasons I had not the possibility to spend one year abroad in USA or UK. This, together with my shyness and social ineptitude has been quite a handicap in my work.

Anyway, I don't care about scientific communities speaking in Italian.

I always prefer technical books in English because a lot of terminology is in English anyway and translations are sometimes poor. Italian clearly is good for science pop books, since the target is mainly made of young people or persons who did not pursue studies beyond high school.

I am german but english is a mandatory subject in every german school so even though math is taught purely in german (in our schools), attending math-lectures that are being taught in english (mostly around the 2nd year of university) is something students have no issues with whatsoever.

In fact, lectures in english feel (at least to me) much more natural. I did my bachelor's thesis in geometric topology in german and i really wish i had done it in english since there was not a single book i've used that was not written in english.

Once i joined the master's program there hasn't been any single lecture that was not taught in english. In fact, i primarily communicate in english with most of my professors since it's much more convenient in most cases.

This is perhaps unusual of my part, by I started to learn english and math at the same time. In the last year of my high school I started to read Rudin's principles of mathematical analysis, my first math book, and I had only a very basic understend of grammar from school. At the begining each theorem was a wreak to understand, since I had to battle with both the proofs and the language. When doing the exercises I would only write in english, so I could pratice.

Overall, I would say it was a really good experience for me. It took me two years to read it all, I finish at the end of the first year of college, but now I have a sufficiently good understend in english to read (and listen) to whaterver I want, math related or not, with almost the same ease as portuguese, my native language.

As for the resources in my mother laguage, here in Brazil we have pleanty of options in both books (most at the undergraduate level) and videos of entire classes that range from the undergraduate to doctoral (or Phd, I dont know) level avaliable for free on the youtube channels of some universities here. On the other hand, I should say that as more advanced my classes gets the more my professors assumes some english knowledge from us. For my part, I tend to focus more on material already in english, so this isn't a issue.

That said, I don't have lots of experience in real communication using english. My pronunciation is probably a mess and this is actually the first time other people can read something that I wrote, so there is always the chance to have lived a lie and to only be able to write gibberish.

I'm a Greek.

We study English from a very young age, so when I entered uni I could easily follow English written books.

I love Dover and Cambridge editions.

Though there are many excellent translations by the Cretan University Press, being able to read to the language of the international scientific community opens your horizons.

That said, I wish I could read in Russian too.

From France, I learnt maths when I already spoke English; when conversing with english-speakers about maths sometimes I run into me literally translating a term that isn't quite right, or using the wrong symbols like wedge instead of cross for the cross product, or .^t A instead of A^T for the transpose of a matrix, but I quickly learnt the English notation

except for one thing that is insane with English people, it's that their N means actually N*

For the community well there's already a lot of French maths resources so I never have to complain, even for Wikipedia most things I'm looking up have good French articles.

In Brazil we have plenty of books in Portuguese from SBM and university publishers to cover all the undergrad courses, and some more advanced topics. It's standard to adopt those or some translation during undergrad. We use some of the excellent local books on basic grad classes too, but occasionally English becomes the norm.

During my Bachelor's all courses were in Fitch, except for one in English. In my master's there were a few in English. The professors usually wrote their own course material, which was very convenient, because it was almost litteraly what they said in class. I don't think more advanced math books in Dutch would be a good idea, there wouldn't be a large enough audience for it.

I do remember this one literature study I wrote (in Dutch) for which I read papers in English, French and German. What a hell of a ride.

I speak Spanish as my native language, my level in English is really basic, I had a lot of mistakes speaking English very often.

Under my situation, my answer to your questions are:

I learned English before study mathematics in the university.

I never had problems to communicate with people because my level (until now) has been sufficient to do it, I only have problems when I don't know the meaning of some words, but it's maybe the 10 or 15 percent of the cases.

About the resources, I don't have a preference for resources in Spanish or English, maybe cause I'm used to both, even there are a lot of information in Spanish, is not the same quantity that in English, so i don't have problem.

I believe that the community of mathematics in Spanish is large, but maybe is an union how maybe is with other languages. Could be good for everyone in the community in Spanish if the same would be larger.

I hope you can understand me.

Langlands has strong feeling about how impoverishing the standardization to very dry and simplified English is to the profession, and I tend to agree with him.

I have learned English since middle school (starting at age 10 where I come from). For my self study I always tried to look for materials in my mother tongue (German) but also English if possible.

The two main reasons for this are:

1. There is just way more material available in English, being the lingua franca, and often articles on Wikipedia are just better or at least more extensive. And some resources, like for example the MIT free online courses are only available in English.

2. German writers have the notion of writing a lot stuff that is not necessary, and I often have the feeling that they just want to sound "important" by using a lot of difficult terms and using a overly rigid text structure. English seems to be way more easy going in that regard, also in scientific writing, which I like.

All in all, I must say that if the writing is easy to understand, it is easier for me to understand something if it is written in my mother tongue. But I can use English too, it will just take longer. An added bonus of using English is that if you know the English scientific terms, you will have an easier time talking to other English speakers, and you will find more and better resource online.

But still, I like to use both languages. After all, if I hadn't known German, I would not have been caught by the absolutely hilarious "Wurstkatastrophe" and would not have started reading into dense sphere packings, and would probably not have written my bachelor about forward error correcting codes in deep space communication.

So I am quite happy that I did not just ignore my mother tongue and do not by default just "go English".

I was in the reverse situation. My native tongue is english but for my MSc I had to read a paper by Serre. I had a smattering of French and it's a long time ago, but I wonder in retrospect whether my poor French made me slow down and understand the paper instead of skimming it.

Communication with other researchers aside, I think there is a slightly orthogonal issue with Math where it is almost an advantage not to have your mind be "corrupted" by knowing English.

The weirdness of the sort of English that gets used in Math. Charles Wells's webpage talks a bit about this. An example that tripped me up a lot was the way If and Only If gets used in technical language. Another example is the use of the term identify. A lot of this started making way more sense when I started thinking of the English in Math as a separate register where I have to put aside my "regular" hat of parsing sentences and think differently. I can do it automatically now but it was a big hurdle.

For context, I am from France, and I'm starting a PhD in Topology :)

​

Did you know english before/independently of studying math?

Yes, because we are taught English from the young age!

​

Have you been in a situation where language has been a barrier, even if small, to communicate with people?

Actually, yes, but ironically, it's when I'm speaking with French people! When we're speaking about maths, we usually get stuck on how to say this word or that word in French, because of all the English literature we're used to. We end up saying the word in English and be good with it, but it can break through the process of thinking, because it get you out of the maths to stuck you on a language problem.

​

What about resources like videos, textbooks, notes, etc? Would you have preferred if they were in your mother language?

It depends. I'm personally fine with everything in English, but that's my do-everything-in-one-tongue-and-f-the-babel-tower side talking. However, when friends or younger students I teach to ask for references, they can be very uncomfortable with reading in English. I have my list of references for lots of topics, but all in English. Yet, I'm unable to suggest a good textbook on, say, Representation Theory to someone asking for it. So I wouldn't mind more textbooks in more languages, or at least, translations of textbooks in other languages.

​

Do you think a large(r) math community in your language would be beneficial to you?

I'm all in for maths buddies and communities! Throughout the years, I found veeeeeery helpful and positive to have people to talk to. Internet is good, but finding yourself in front of a blackboard with someone to discuss about this or that is far better than reading books and/or papers.

​

I guess maths also helped me a lot with English. I sure do lots of mistakes, but far less than I used to. It helped me because I know I can be a bit lazy when it comes to that kind of things, but being forced to read in English when you need it helps with that. Now, I have everything in English, and I sometimes find it easier to speak English than it is for French, words just come in English first. My phone, my computer, my netflix, everything is in English, and I find it fine :) (but usually, translations of series/games are poorly-made, at least in French)

yes, no, initially yes and later no, no it was large enough

Talking by experience, it really differs on the way you process things. Even tho Spanish is my mother toungue, there are some explanations that just click better on english.

The other benefit is that you can google one topic on one language if you do not grasp it with the other. That has helped me A LOT on my research assignments on uni.