Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Learn Sanskrit Online

learnsanskrit.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#41

Post by jimgardener »

r0h1n wrote: post #3

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

Long time back I was interested in Indian Tantric stuff and found that most English translations (except those by Arthur Avalon) contained too many interpretations by the translator -some of them skewed :).So I got some original Sanskrit texts and tried to translate word by word .I couldn't progress much becoz you cannot understand the meaning of a sentence by just adding up the words- you need to learn the grammer.At that time I wished I had learned the language

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#42

Post by involans »

r0h1n wrote: post #3

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

Because it is an enjoyable pursuit. I would agree that it is not the most practical thing to do; but not everything need be practical. Incidentally - this course seems to be one of the better ones I've seen; it actually uses modern phonetic and segmental terminology instead of throwing people straight into sandhi with no explanation of why this happens.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#43

Post by atlantic »

r0h1n wrote: post #9
ximeng wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They try to answer that question here: http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction "Its importance is plain: Sanskrit was once the most influential literary language in India, and texts written in the language could be understood by millions of people throughout the South Asian world. These texts contain profound meditations on every point on the spectrum of human concern: existence, reality, God, love, duty, marriage,…

> "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond." What does that even mean? Indian history, intellectual or not, isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators. As someone who was forced to learn Sanskrit in school for 3 years, I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher o…

I'm a regular HN reader, and IT professional, and I'm currently learning Latin, have been for the past few months. Why? To gain access to classical, Medieval and Renaissance literature, and more importantly, to the mindset of the Romans. A similar reasoning would apply to Greek or Sanskrit.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#44

Post by r0h1n »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #28
r0h1n wrote: post #3

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

Serious question, how many languages do you know and actively use? As someone who grew up bilingual I've found that there is a certain untranslatable element in any language, particular when it comes to poetry and humor. Why do you learn multiple programming languages? Why are there several types of text-editing systems? Put it to you this way: learning a new language can be as enlightening as learning functional pro…

Okay, serious answer: I can read and write proficiently in English and Hindi. I can speak proficiently in Malayalam. I can understand or business-converse in Kannada. I can understand about 75% of Tamil conversations. I learned Sanskrit in school. I've tried at various points to learn both French and Spanish using Rosetta Stone, but I gave up after the initial few weeks, probably because I was doing it alone.

Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#45

Post by r0h1n »

ksk wrote: post #37
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)

>The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Okay, give me 10 reasons.

I'd be satisfied with 5. Maybe even 3.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#46

Post by trevelyan »

ksk wrote: post #37
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)

>The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Okay, give me 10 reasons.

(1) You are defusing a bomb, but the wires are tucked behind a casing on which there is a label written in Sanskrit and underlined in red. With only 2 minutes left before the bomb explodes, don't you wish you started the language earlier?

(2) Women love Sanskrit.

(3) You have a dream one day that seems more real than real. In it, you are standing in a desert and are approached by a man who seems intensely familiar. With a shock, you realize this is a flashback from a past life. And you know you would have something incredible to tell yourself... if only both of you spoke Sanskrit.

(4) Academic research.

(5) On a business trip to China, a question emerges about the etymological origins of certain Chinese characters, and whether they entered the language through Middle Indo-Aryan speakers. Flush with the answer from your knowledge of ancient Sanskrit, you are able to impress your hosts and secure the contract.

(6) "Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. While there is no need to worry, we do have to ask: is there anyone on this plane who happens to be a doctor, and also speaks Sanskrit?"

(7) Your boss has outsourced development work on a new software platform to a team in Uttarakhand. The project was a disaster as predicted, but it is now essential to find someone - anyone - who is both local and able to read the commit log as well as Sanskrit-commented source code.

(8) A software malfunction switches your phone's display and input languages to Sanskrit. Now how exactly are you planning to switch it back? And if you read Sanskrit, why would you ever want to?

(9) You are working for Google, and tasked with organizing ALL of the world's information.

(10) As a member of the TSA working to ensure aviation safety, you are responsible for screening Sanskrit speaking passengers, and conversing with them as part of general counter-terrorism screening measures. Can you really do that with only Pimsleur-level fluency?

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#47

Post by srik »

donniezazen wrote: post #15
slaxman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a ployglot and know several indian and foreign languages. My favourite is Sanskrit. Why? Once I learnt Sanskrit, esp. the grammar, learning other languages was really easy. You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.

How do you practice or make yourself not forget the several languages you know? I find it really hard to be proficient in a language unless you live among native speakers?

There is a small village in India which still speaks Sanskrit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#48

Post by Techasura »

The point is what would you do after learning or may be spending real good amount of time with it, what is the real need. I learnt sanskrit for more than 6 years and have passed upto threeeteeya(an exam to test your sanskrit skill). When i learn something i should be able to converse about it with many people as i can and help spread the knowledge or information. But learning an old language like sanskrit. What i found after learning the language is there is a lot of history which doesn't fetch any real world gain to my career, my social life, my finances or even recognition from a worldwide community.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#49

Post by kops »

r0h1n wrote: post #3

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

As an Indian,

1. For the same reason as solving sudoku online i.e. for the joy of it.

2. Some interesting literature was written in Sanskrit. I may want to read that.

3. To be able to judge when a hindu preacher is bullshitting me.

4. To be able to critically analyze some of the religious stuff e.g. does the age of Sun god tally with what the modern physics tells us.

5. Its grammar expands my view of what is possible to express in a language.

6. For the same reason as pursuing archaeology. The words in a dead language can tell you a lot about the life when it was in common use.

I see that you substantiate some of your views with a "P.S." that you were forced to learn it for 3 years. That means nothing. I learnt it for 5 years purely to pass exams but that hardly makes me qualified enough to start judging whether others should learn it or not.

Nopes I don't know Sanskrit and it is not on my radar right now. But a while ago when I tried to learn German, faint memories from Sanskrit classes came quite handy(see #5 above).

Post reply on HN