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Learn Sanskrit Online

learnsanskrit.org

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Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#71

Post by yati »

tokenadult wrote: post #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…

thanks for the enlightening suggestions. But thanks I want to learn Sanskrit. I don't have to justify what I do as long as it doesn't cause harm to someone. Please stop the negativity.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#73

Post by yati »

kamaal wrote: post #66
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.)

>>Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Well forget Sanskrit for just one minute. The utility of any language in the modern world today, apart from day-to-day conversation(Which happens only because that's the only language accessible to kids at birth through their parents) by and large depends on what scientific, economic, art and other kind of growth happens in that language. Nearly all Indian langu…

I'd completely missed this one. Now that I think of it, my day to day Hindi and Marathi derive heavily from Western vocabulary - in cases even when there is a word for a concept/object we prefer to use the more popular Western words. e.g., no one says संगणक - they stick to "Computer".

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#74

Post by tekalon »

r0h1n wrote: post #3

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

As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#75

Post by akprasad »

Oh, hey, I'm on Hacker News.

I'm surprised and a little embarrassed to see my site here, but I'll take the opportunity to address some of the things y'all have mentioned.

To people proposing language alternatives: a totally fair point, and more power to you. I made this site back in college when I was studying Sanskrit for the first time, and I was disappointed by the lack of resources available online. The site started as a series of study notes and sort of mutated into a "course" ... but that course is incomplete and has been in desperate need of repair for some time.

About the PHP errors: yeah, sorry about that! I started out with PHP because I knew pretty much nothing about web programming and needed something that "just worked." The new version of the site, which has been in development hell for a year, is in Flask (Python). I haven't touched the PHP stuff in two years, and I usually need gloves and a whole lot of disinfectant to do so.

Why learn online: because the books are usually disappointing or expensive.

Why Sanskrit: I just find it particularly beautiful. The statement that r0h1n took issue with is stated grandiosely, but I stand by it.

On "Hindutva nonsense": I empathize strongly with their motivations, but I agree that most of the ink spilled in the name of Sanskrit is vacuous and hyperbolic.

For those wondering about the fuss: I particularly enjoy kāvya [1], usually because it's just beautiful poetry [2] but also because it shows off some fancy linguistic acrobatics, the likes of which I haven't seen in any other language [3].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavya [2]: Citation needed, but I like Kālidāsa in particular. One of the least horrible translations of one of his most beautiful works: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sha/sha17.htm [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ing... for some examples.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#76

Post by laichzeit0 »

One of the reasons I'd like to, time permitting, learn Sanskrit would be to enjoy the Upanishads, which my favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, regarded so highly:

"If the reader has also received the benefit of the Vedas, the access to which by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries, if then the reader, I say, has received his initiation in primeval Indian wisdom, and received it with an open heart, he will be prepared in the very best way for hearing what I have to tell him. It will not sound to him strange, as to many others, much less disagreeable; for I might, if it did not sound conceited, contend that every one of the detached statements which constitute the Upanishads, may be deduced as a necessary result from the fundamental thoughts which I have to enunciate, though those deductions themselves are by no means to be found there."

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#77

Post by yati »

pessimizer wrote: post #59
yati wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> His opinion isn't an imposition on you.

If you look around and read their comments, they are asking people for a justification why people would want to learn Sanskrit in spite of "infinitely many other" interesting things that are supposedly out there to learn. I call this imposition. If you don't, that's a boundary issue :)

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#78

Post by memracom »

r3m6 wrote: post #27
r0h1n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 am with you - as someone who was forced to learn Latin in school for four years. The reason given to us was exactly the same, just replace "India and beyond" with "Europe and beyond". I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher or a linguist.

I only took a year of Latin but I found it very useful in understanding my own language, English, as well as helping me in learning French (almost bilingual) and Spanish (competent). But the biggest benefit was that when I learned Russian, the whole idea of a case system was something that I was already used to, and the rest of Russian grammar (the verb) is incredibly simple in comparison to any other European language. Latin is an ideal stepping stone to fluency in Russian, and that is a very useful language to know in the modern world.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#79

Post by ksk »

trevelyan wrote: post #46
ksk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Wow, I'm glad I didn't ask for non-practical reasons. IHMO none of these make any sense whatsoever for anyone other than a minority of a minority of people. Those 20 people should go ahead and learn Sanskrit - for the rest of the world its pointless.

Re: Learn Sanskrit Online

#80

Post by cscurmudgeon »

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 would love to visit your land. The land where there is no Google.
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