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skj

> This condition is known as cerebellar agenesis.

To tease you a little bit, I read this as

> This condition is known as being born without a cerebellum.

I don't know why we need a latin name for everything!

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It certainly makes it easier to find in a book or via search. You have one word for what it's called, instead of having some under "Born without a cerebellum," some as "Missing cerebellum," others in "No cerebellum," "Undeveloped cerebellum," etc.

Plus it's more convenient to say. Not a big deal for us, but to people who deal with crazy medical conditions all day long, describing each one in natural language would be imprecise and time consuming.

Though obviously it's not the reason it was adopted, it is kind of neat that using a dead language for scientific terms disambiguates them cleanly for the purposes of searching.

Any live language would have accidental matches (even quoted) where it's just the obvious thing to say, a la "born without a cerebellum".

To expand on that... it also solves the problem of technical terms evolving new nomenclature (or new meanings for old nomenclature!) over time.

not a dead language.. greek language is still alive and indeed it sounds like "born without a cerebellum" (but to be fair the syntax reminds of medical term)

Latin is a dead language, there has not been a native speaker for a very long time[1].

[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death

It is still in constant use as the official language of the Vatican.

They keep having to invent new Latin words and phrases so they can discuss things like hotpants, which are brevíssimae bracae femíneae apparently.

Have a look here - http://usvsth3m.com/post/95991771713/hotpants-flirt-and-othe...

The cashpoint with Latin in comic-sans is awesome.

edit - translating from the latin, comic-sans is a pretty accurate font name.

having dead languages to imprecisely map to a word (but nobody knows that because no one really speaks the dead language) isn't any better. It also creates barriers and wasted time in learning the practice. The average individual has to deal with that folly even more when it comes to law.

It's better to have a shorter and noun form for referencing being born without a cerebellum. It's especially convenient for researchers who write about it and have to refer to being born without a cerebellum multiple times in a single paragraph.

It's better to have a shorter and noun form for referencing cerebellar agenesis. It's especially convenient for researchers who write about it and have to refer to cerebellar agenesis multiple times in a single paragraph.

Well, I'd read it as "this condition is known as failing to develop a cerebellum". Even if everyone was born without a cerebellum and you were expected to grow yours by the age of 10, not growing one would be sensibly termed "agenesis".

Also, "agenesis" is greek, like most medical terminology ;)

Aha, thanks :)

Because it's much more convenient to have one single name for it in all of Earth's languages.

Perhaps you're thinking of taxonomy? English names for diseases don't set their names in other languages.

Does "cerebellar agenesis" sound English to you? Almost all things in medicine have almost universal names derived from Greek and/or Latin. Of course, until a few hundred years ago it was because those were the languages of science; these days the terms still fill the same purpose as they did back then - providing a common vocabulary for people from diverse origins.

Yes, "cerebellar agenesis" is an English term. Having Latin and Greek etymologies doesn't make the words Latin or Greek; "cerebellar" isn't even a legal Latin adjectival form.

Here are the titles of the wikipedia article "Cerebellum" in some other languages:

    Lillehjerne (Danish)
    Kleinhirn (German)
    Parengephaliδa (Greek - Παρεγκεφαλίδα if you can read Greek)
    Cerebelo (Spanish)
    Cervelet (French)
    Otak kecil (Indonesian)
    Smadzenites (Latvian)
    Kisagy (Hungarian)
    Beyincik (Turkish)
    Xiaonao (Chinese - 小脑)

Nobody's copying the English word (well, Tagalog and Malaysian are) -- they're all using their own native terms for "small brain".

Yes, the cerebellum is know as 'lillehjernen' in Danish and that word is the only word most people know for it. Nevertheless, doctors learn the word cerebellum so they can read what doctors in other countries write.

They also use the word amongst themselves. Googling for 'cerebellum ugeskrift for læger' gives plenty of hits. Likewise for 'cerebellar ugeskrift for læger'.

They might write 'agenese' instead of 'agenesis', though.

I don't know why we need an english name for every keyword in programming languages!

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because it's slightly faster, still makes sense if you have learned the right bits of Latin, and because it makes you feel smart.

More usefully it means doctors fluent in different languages have a very good chance of accurately describing conditions to each other.

Same with Greek! Can't wait for that "not-quite-finished-version-of-a-software-product" to be released!

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