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University For The Non-English

Status Update

Let me first write down a quick status update: It's been about a whole month since I've entered University here in Athens. While it indeed started out toughly, I've since adapted and I've finally managed to collect quiet some considerable free time between my lessons. Despite public transportation still being exhausting, I always load my bag with literature or textbooks and I hardly notice the hours go by. I've become a member of the library of sciences and I've recently borrowed the "Programming Perl" book. It's an interesting and complicated language indeed; It was designed by a linguist and that's why it has all sorts of crazy rules, such as the mere context having power over whether an array will be treated as a collection of its values or just its length! I'm still learning the absolute basics but I'm looking forward to learning more about whatever CGI is, despite having heard that it might as well be obsolete. I've been taught about Logic Gates, Boolean Algebra, Matrices and MOSFE transistors which were all (and still are) mind blowing!

Learning Obstacles

Let me now get to what actually motivated me to publish this article: Studying Computer Science as a non-English native is painful. Every single one of our textbooks is vehemently translated into Greek, leaving only a handful of traces of intact English vocabulary behind. I'm essentially obligated to learn most things twice, because the Greek translations of scientific concepts are just not searchable online. I was obligated to memorize that Πληθικότητα meant Cardinality and that Injective Functions are nothing but Ένα-Προς-Ένα Συναρτήσεις. Some textbooks are translated erroneously and some terms are straight up devised out of thin air. These neologisms tend to sound unnatural, artificial and complicated, so why bother printing out Greekifications? A couple of professors have advised us to study the English versions instead, but I will be examined in Greek nonetheless...

I still cannot come up with a viable and universal solution though. Mingling Greek with English terminology will certainly be confusing because it will force students to context switch between languages more than twice during every single phrase or sentence. Yet offering English textbooks will require English fluency which only a handful of students have acquired, and it's evident that I'm still not part of them. Being non-English in modern society does hinder progress, and that's why the rest of the world needs to courageously agree upon the adoption of a uniform teaching language, which in the case of Computer Science shall undoubtedly be English. Otherwise students will be wasting more than a couple of months trying to get used to new terminology for concepts that they had already mastered. The Internet, a vast library of free learning resources, is English and will remain so. An institution that strives to produce competitive and influential students shall not isolate them just because of their ethnicity. A student with no access to the international community has little to no potential of innovating and making the world a better place for everyone.