Times past: a grub hut & German as a language in science

If you have enjoyed the German visa regulation that basically says "no German skills - no visa" *, let's take a moment to express our sympathy to them about the loss of the German language as an important language of science.

Up until less than 100 years ago, even after World War I, Germany was such a scientific powerhouse that its somewhat unwieldy language was no obstacle to the attraction of its universities and research institutes.
In today's world, the vast majority of advanced German research is published in English. If you don't, nobody will read it, said a scientist some 40 years ago.

But science is also forgiving in that some German terms and concepts from the heydays of German research are still around for specialists all over the world to enjoy or grapple with.

A couple of easy examples: Mr. Bunsen's burner is a tool chemistry students love. Mr. Roentgen's X rays found an unexpected refuge in the English language when the German's went all proud and renamed them to Roengtenstrahlen (Roentgen rays). In mathematics, students learn about eigenvectors and eigenvalues. Note that there an eigenvector in the equations you can use to compute the movement of your tongue when you pronounce "eigen". Just saying.

A while ago we were working our way through the complete British archeology series Time Team when one of the team resolved a term we had heard on the show many times: grub hut.

To any American, grub is a colloquial term for food, and since the archeologists had explained grub huts were ancient houses with a dug out cellar feature for storage, we had happily - and mistakenly - assumed the grub house was something like archeology slang for a pit dwelling, you know, people live and eat there.

Then, out of the blue, an archeologist pointing, as so often, at one of John Gater's geophys results, said "this here could be a grub house, which comes from the German Grubenhaus..."

Oh, my, Grube is German for pit or dug out, Haus, of course, is house.

The Grubenhaus Ersatz grub hut is one of the leftovers from German archeology's better days. 

* Exceptions apply, so many exceptions in fact that going through the list tells you more about the German government views of foreigners than you want to know.