Language Factor ?

A concerned Mom writes:

"I am the mom of a particle physics grad student in the US.  I notice
already that my son often travels to other countries or works with
scientists who
have come to the US.  Exciting, but how do you manage the language factor?
He was always good at languages in school, but certainly isn't fluent in
any of them.  Do all physicists speak second (or more) languages?"

Well your son is lucky. Because the language of science (besides math) is
English. I am German and languages were my worst subjects in high school (including German). But you learn it as you go a long. As an undergraduate in Germany most of the text books I had to read were in English. Usually the problem is not the language rather the contents. Then I went on to grad school in London. Well initially I expressed everything (also everyday situations) in Physics terms. But then you learn by being in the country. These days I am very bad talking in German about my research and we even speak sometimes in English amongst German colleagues.
I also have friends from the  US and England who went as Postdocs to Germany and hoped to brush up on their German. This was sometimes not too successful, because all their colleagues spoke in English to them. Well you probably realize from these lines that my English is far from being perfect. But you get the meaning at that is the important bit