Science communication

Scientists who cannot be understood are accused of talking Fachchinesisch, and the word follows a grammar rule worth learning once. Every language, used as a noun, is neuter, and German keeps two forms of it. The plain one, Chinesisch, does not decline and names a language as somebody speaks it: Sie spricht fließend Chinesisch, sein Chinesisch ist eingerostet. The other, das Chinesische, is an adjective turned noun and names the language as a system, so it takes adjective endings: aus dem Chinesischen übersetzt, im Chinesischen. Mocking compounds are always made from the plain form, because they describe a way of talking rather than a language: das Fachchinesisch, das Beamtendeutsch, im Fachchinesisch der Juristen. The rest of this list is the vocabulary of getting out of it — from the Fachaufsatz to the science desk and on to a public that owes the field nothing.