• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This is medicine in a nutshell too. And not just abbreviations, but acronyms… for words in a language that no one uses. I hate it.

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      I literally took Latin in college for the sole reason that Latin is used in super stupid ways, and my science communication degree would be worth less without that knowledge. Because Latin-base is fully half of the science terms you need to know.

      And my college was super on board with my reasoning. Wish I’d also had the mental capacity for ancient Greek, because that’s literally the other half of naming schemes.

      Ridiculous.

      I’m super into modern scientists giving shit pop culture names. Because holy shit is it ever more memorable than some random Latin/greek bullshit.

      • oo1@lemmings.world
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        4 months ago

        Strange that ‘classics’ are taught mostly in the poshest schools. It’s rare for elites to want to preserve any power they have and make it inaccessible to oiks. /s

    • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Well, what other language should be used? Latin is the language of science because there’s no way we’d ever agree on which alive language to use.

      • someguy3@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Um English? It’s the international language and language of research, though some may not like hearing that.

          • someguy3@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            English might change drastically so much that we change words entirely (so old abbreviations don’t match new words), so let’s just go with the guaranteed dead language where abbreviations already don’t line up. Yeah I can’t agree with that logic.

        • zarathustrad@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The whole point of using a “dead” language is that languages change over time and scientists once had the foresight to attempt making their works more universal over both multiple languages and over time.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Latin is prelevant but many anatomy terms and conditions are Greek because a lot of the literature first describing conditions and early anatomy was Greek. Heme for blood, dermis for skin, cholecyst(bile bladder) for gallbladder, cyst for bladder ect. Anatomy itself is a word that comes from Greek.