Dear Catalan Archaeologists,
any kind of scientific research is ultimately a collaborative effort. We all build on the foundations laid by previous generations, and our thinking needs to connect with what other people in our field and adjacent fields are thinking, as well. There can be no real progress without collaboration.
The basic requirement of collaboration, however, is communication. To make communication with your fellow researchers possible, you need to publish in a language they can understand. Hint: Catalan is not a language most archaeologists understand.
Believe me, I understand about the plight of small languages, and I'd like to see them saved, all of them. By all means, write novels, write poetry, write whatever you like in Catalan. Have a whole literary renaissance! But please, choose a language that more than perhaps two dozen archaeologists in the world understand to publish your excavation reports. Your reports would be more accessible to the vast majority of archaeologists if you published them in *Latin*, for heaven's sake! (I still wouldn't be able to read them, but I'm fairly certain there are more archaeologists who know Latin than there are archaeologists who know Catalan.)
Sincerely,
Me.
***
Really, sometimes I wish archaeologists would take a page from the sciences' book, and start publishing predominantly in English. People in the Middle Ages were cleverer than us in that respect, it seems: they had a language of science: Latin. What a great idea, to write all scientific works in *one* language, so that every scientist, no matter from what country, could understand them! I hear you, people who are concerned about English taking over the world at the expense of all the other languages. I don't want to see that happen, either. I love English, but I don't want to live in a monolingual world. But in this one area, it would make an awful lot of sense to me to ditch national pride or regional pride or whatever, and go with the most widely understood language in the world. (Though I'd be happy to settle for Spanish or French, if necessary, in this particular case.)
Research, studying, is about communication, about cross-pollination, about getting different views on things, and about getting the big picture. It sometimes seems to me that the field of archaeology, in particular, doesn't like this idea at all. Instead, every country, and even, in some cases, certain *parts* of certain countries, are "doing their own thing", even to the point of making it ridiculously difficult for any archaeologist who does not happen to know Catalan, or Sardic, or (insert struggling, small European regional language of your choice), to get a clear view of what's been written about the region in question. Although we do not try to prove that our own 'team' is 'the best' anymore (an awful lot of archaeology used to be about this kind of thing - especially in Germany), we still seem to be firmly entrenched in the age of nationalism ('cause 'regionalism' is just another kind of nationalism, really). What's so wrong about making the results of your research accessible?
... Okay. Rant over. I'm putting the 'meta' icon on this, although it's not fannish meta... but I don't have any Real Life or archaeology icons.
The basic requirement of collaboration, however, is communication. To make communication with your fellow researchers possible, you need to publish in a language they can understand. Hint: Catalan is not a language most archaeologists understand.
Believe me, I understand about the plight of small languages, and I'd like to see them saved, all of them. By all means, write novels, write poetry, write whatever you like in Catalan. Have a whole literary renaissance! But please, choose a language that more than perhaps two dozen archaeologists in the world understand to publish your excavation reports. Your reports would be more accessible to the vast majority of archaeologists if you published them in *Latin*, for heaven's sake! (I still wouldn't be able to read them, but I'm fairly certain there are more archaeologists who know Latin than there are archaeologists who know Catalan.)
Sincerely,
Me.
***
Really, sometimes I wish archaeologists would take a page from the sciences' book, and start publishing predominantly in English. People in the Middle Ages were cleverer than us in that respect, it seems: they had a language of science: Latin. What a great idea, to write all scientific works in *one* language, so that every scientist, no matter from what country, could understand them! I hear you, people who are concerned about English taking over the world at the expense of all the other languages. I don't want to see that happen, either. I love English, but I don't want to live in a monolingual world. But in this one area, it would make an awful lot of sense to me to ditch national pride or regional pride or whatever, and go with the most widely understood language in the world. (Though I'd be happy to settle for Spanish or French, if necessary, in this particular case.)
Research, studying, is about communication, about cross-pollination, about getting different views on things, and about getting the big picture. It sometimes seems to me that the field of archaeology, in particular, doesn't like this idea at all. Instead, every country, and even, in some cases, certain *parts* of certain countries, are "doing their own thing", even to the point of making it ridiculously difficult for any archaeologist who does not happen to know Catalan, or Sardic, or (insert struggling, small European regional language of your choice), to get a clear view of what's been written about the region in question. Although we do not try to prove that our own 'team' is 'the best' anymore (an awful lot of archaeology used to be about this kind of thing - especially in Germany), we still seem to be firmly entrenched in the age of nationalism ('cause 'regionalism' is just another kind of nationalism, really). What's so wrong about making the results of your research accessible?
... Okay. Rant over. I'm putting the 'meta' icon on this, although it's not fannish meta... but I don't have any Real Life or archaeology icons.