Is it worth it to learn a foreign language to read math and science papers in those languages?

Only Chinese and maybe Japanese/Russian worth learning desu

usually when people say they've learned a language it means they are fluent in it. not sure i get the car analogy mate, i can say im learning a language but im not sure i can say im learning a car
feels like you had some idea but it got lost somewhere in the way

as someone who is attending university in a language that is not his own, I agree with you

>Do you want to give up 4 years of your life, dedicating an hour a day studying a language, and all the time required to learn how to go about learning a language and acquiring materials, just for that?

it's not easy

>Do you want to give up 4 years of your life, dedicating an hour a day studying a language
holy shit you fucking brainlet cunts
just learn the utmost basics of linguistics and the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and you can be semi-fluent in any fucking language within 6 months.

so what you're saying is language ability is a spectrum?

Depends what you want to read. For example there's a ton of classic computer sci/LISP texts written by French mathematicians that aren't translated well. Plenty of Soviet mathematicians work was never translated well either.

Really the only way to learn a foreign language is immersion, so you'd have to move there and be forced to use it everyday and be surrounded by it constantly.

That's why it's a personal question

>japanese
>to read science
we all know you just want to play the latest hentai game, OP

French is worth learning if you want to study math.

Can confirm, I've been learning Japanese so I can fulfill my weeb desires, but if someone asks I tell them I'm learning for scientific reasons.

Those scientific reasons being will this lewd 2d girl get my dick hard?

>That's like saying you 'learned a car.'
I thought it was more like saying you learned to drive. There's always more to learn, but you're proficient with it to some utilitarian degree.

Okay. What is being fluent? You can hold a conversation about the weather? You've read a grammar book? You have 20,000 words in passive memory? You can read a given sentence in 2 seconds rather than 3? You can pronounce words correctly? You haven't had to look at a dictionary in a very long time? You're completely indistinguishable from a native when you talk or write, at all times, forever after you achieve it? Some combination of all of the above? How would you measure it? It isn't very clearly defined, and the dictionary definition of 'fluency' is completely useless. Someone can read aloud sentences in a book with complete 'fluency' and still not understand a word of what they just said, by it's definition.

>i can say im learning a language but im not sure i can say im learning a car
When you say you're learning a language that implies you're learning how to use and understand a language. This is typical because there are specific sentences that look like the aforementioned but actually mean something more specific. "I'm learning the piano" means "I'm learning how to play the piano," because obviously you cannot 'learn' an object, but you can learn how to use it. Fluency is not well defined or easily measured, so neither is 'learned a language.'

You can learn how a car works, you can learn how to drive a car. The same for a language. You can learn it's grammar rules, you can learn given words, you can learn to read and write it's alphabet or syllabary, and so on. It's a big system of parts.

Yes. Even native speakers of a language do not have complete comprehension all the time.

That is a better way of putting it, yes, but it's still impossible to tell when someone has broken through some barrier that suddenly takes them from 'I have not learned this language' to "I have learned this language.'

>it's still impossible to tell when someone has broken through some barrier
No, it isn't. You just specify "learned this language well enough to X".

Outside of that, you've learned the language when you can pass as knowing the language in the contexts for which you have learned it. Beyond that, when you do not qualify as having special language needs under the law. Functional definitions are most useful for such things.

Any good university will require you to pass 2 language exams to get a PhD in Math.

No.
Someone please post that one pic with the percentage of research papers in english vs many other languages.

But if you've already learn another language before in school and uni, like the general education spanish or some shit then you can continue studying that because you know a bit, become better and there you go.

Time is gold senpai, because the more time passes, it will be more worth than it used to be.
Y'all will know when you become older

based.

OPOHRATIONER CARCURUS AND RAPRACE TRANSFOHM

How long will it take me to learn enough to read this? lambda bugyo tk/cdr/mwl

Esse meine scheisse

It is worth it for other reasons. The science papers we get to read are a bonus.

How did you study the language? Just curious because I want to learn German and not sure of the best route between the rosetta stone bullshit or uni courses.

No. Translation software is getting pretty damn good, and all the really good stuff is translated into English anyway. Learn a language for any of three reasons: Because you plan to move to that country, because your wife is from that country, or because you just enjoy learning languages.

Trying to become semi-fluent in a language is a complete waste of time unless you're trying to marry or make friends in that country.

But learning enough Chinese to translate Chinese math is really not that terrible and can potentially be astronomically useful (but only if you're talking PhD level). It's nowhere near as bad as learning Chinese enough to be able to communicate in Chinese. When you have access to all these internet references, you got a lot to work with.

It's fundamentally flawed though. Different translation software systematically fails at different things. Try getting accurate translations for
>Which restaurant did Mary love and John despise?
>Which boy did Mary's talking to bother most?
>He must challenge his enemies, and challenge them he will.
>This is the company that John intended to undermine Mary.