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Learn Sanskrit Online

learnsanskrit.org

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Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#51
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response. Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher. (And before you ask, most of it…

Again, what HN reader (or otherwise), do you think is interested in reading ancient literature written in Sanskrit? A researcher or linguist I'm guessing. And maybe 3 other people. I'm afraid your arguments in favour of learning Sanskrit are as generic and theoretical as most other comments.

I am interested. Not a researcher, not a linguist. Just some asshole who wants to know a new skill that may come in handy when exploring Indian mythology. You really need to just concede that your interests are your own and that your rather harsh view of Sanskrit is one that isn't universally shared.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#52

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 fou…

Listen to this man. Anyone who studies a dead language for “real-world gain” will probably end up disappointed.

The only real reason to learn is so you can read old books in that language. And you might get a few points of social prestige, but that alone generally won't make up for the hours and years you put into it.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response. Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher. (And before you ask, most of it…

>Sanskrit was the primary language of literature was one of the.. FIFY.

Maybe you should read the rest of that sentence...

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#54
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Hindus chant in Sanskrit for religious/ceremonial purposes, e.g. Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita is often chanted before eating a meal ( http://www.asitis.com/15/ ). It's useful to understand what the Sanskrit words mean, although there are English translations for virtually all Sanskrit texts.

If you're talking about the shlokas most commonly recited by average people, they may amount to maybe 10-20 lines. Learning their meaning will take at best one hour of research/effort. Learning Sanskrit to understand the meaning of a shloka is like learning Latin because you came across 'Cogito, Ergo Sum' or 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' on some blog. Both are pointless overkill.

This average people comment isn't consistent with what I am familiar with. I regularly come across people, especially in the older generations, who have memorized literally pages of verse that they may not necessarily understand fully. The older generations in general in India seem to be multilingual as a rule and deeply interested in Vedic philosophy and ancient Indian history. Case in point the recent success of those Shivva books.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#55
post #37

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>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. W…

Okay, okay. I'll learn Sanskrit already :)

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate on this a little more? How did German and Finnish derive from Sanskrit? Could you give examples?

Derived from Sanskrit is probably wrong, but German, Finnish and Sanskrit belong to the Indo-European language family ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-european ). Sanskrit is a very old language in this family tree ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language ) and thus very close to the common ancestor. Being close to the ancestor probably means that it shares many traits with it that were inheri…

Finnish is Uralic, not Indo-European.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#57
To people who wants to know how scientific Sanskrit language is and also about how we are missing it's essence:

http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Sanskrit.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQ4hIG9w7c

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262393

BTW, I am from OK and travelled to India in the context of ancient real values. Travelled to many parts of Himalayas and learned bit about the language, quite amazed how such a great language like Sanskrit really has lost its lime light. Many great prescriptions of Medicine, Science, and Astrology are hidden in the great language. I am not trying to convince anyone but just thought of sharing my thoughts. For those of you, who have learnt it at their schools mostly read it as subject, not really learned its real value.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#58
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Depends on how you feel about the vedic "sciences."

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#59
post #20
post #3

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

From your comments, this is like asking "Why would someone, programmer or not, want to learn Lisp online?". The answer: because they want to, because they might find it interesting. They don't have to ask you. You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.

>You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.

His opinion isn't an imposition on you. Not even his opinion on what you should or should not be doing. If you find it to be, that's a boundary issue.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#60
Oh, gosh, the usual Hindutva nonsense. Let me first of all dispel any notion that I don't like learning languages "for fun." See my Hacker News user profile for more details on what languages I have learned. I have learned enough facts about Sanskrit and the various languages that are written in the Devanagari alphabet to know

1) The written history of Sanskrit is much less that 3,000 years long. (The historiography of India is hard, because most of the writing materials used in ancient India were perishable, and thus much less preserved than the written records of other parts of the world that are equally old, but plainly the Vedas and other texts from ancient India are less than 3,000 years old.)

2) Yes, Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, which means it brings to mind features of other Indo-European languages. Each cognate language makes it easier to learn other cognate languages in turn. So you could gain an advantage in learning Sanskrit, for example, by learning German, Russian, and Greek first (as I have). Or you could learn Sanskrit first, as many secondary school students in India have done. But while learning each language, you might still ask yourself, "What texts am I going to read, or what conversations will I have, now that I know this language?" Sanskrit doesn't have a particularly high degree of utility, if that is what you are looking for in a new language, for day-by-day communication today.

3) Finnish is not an Indo-European language, so it is not cognate to Sanskrit, and therefore learning Sanskrit doesn't provide much advantage for learning Finnish. Come on, get the basis facts right. Learning Estonian would provide a huge boost for learning Finnish, of course. Learning Hungarian, Turkish, or even Mongolian would provide more remote advantages for learning Finnish.

4) Learning Tamil, Malayalam, or other languages of south India usually categorized as Dravidian (not cognate with Indo-European) languages just might give you a deeper understanding of India and its cultural heritage than the same effort spent learning Sanskrit. That's something to think about if you like India and its culture, as I do.

5) If you would like to learn a language that maps well in its linguistic structure to first-order logic notation, I strongly recommend Chinese (Modern Standard Chinese or some other Sinitic language) over any Indo-European language, including Sanskrit. All languages have arbitrary grammatical rules. Strictly speaking, no language is more "logical" than any other. But if you like a one-to-one correspondence between spoken language sentence structure and the usual first-order logic notation, Chinese is a good place to start.

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