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Comment by monster_group | Hacker News Reader

I teach Sanskrit to adult enthusiasts. It is mind boggling how people think that they can learn a language by being a passive consumer - that I need to do all the talking while they just sit and listen and take notes. I repeatedly tell them you need to be a producer and not a mere consumer. Creating your own sentences forces you to actively recall what you have learnt and is going to be far more productive than reading what is written. (Though reading is important too in learning a new language.) Being a producer and "active recall" require both effort and time and people give up quickly. Only the tenacious ones remain and they are the ones who learn.

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What I recall from learning language, just telling me that I should be active did not worked because I had no idea what sentences to produce. I needed concrete task from instructor to produce anything - including sentences in my own language.

I think the confusing part to many is that learning a language is actually learning several things and are as follows:

1. One has a to learn the physical skill to write different characters (some times). 2. Many times a language requires one to learn the physical skills of making different sounds and combinations of sounds with the mouth/tongue and throat. 3. One has to learn the skill of hearing and distinguishing words out of the amalgamation of them in the form of a sentence. 4. One has to learn the grammar of the language. 5. One has to associate the new words with the world around them; which would be vocabulary.

Most people think the last thing in this list is all they need to do and the rest will just happen - when it doesn't they get frustrated and give up. I think if they go into it knowing the different things they will need to learn and the different approaches to those skills that are best - we might have more successes.

This is how I have learnt various languages - by speaking while learning. However, Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis expounds that language acquisition occurs only during exposure to new language and not while speaking. Do people who give up learning a language still understand what is being spoken by the other person in that lang, even if they themselves may not be able to construct a sentence?

It depends on what one's goal is. If one's goal is to just be able to read and understand others speaking or comprehend written text, then yes, I think creating your own sentences is not that important and mere exposure can take you a long way. In fact, I would say 99.9% of people who "know Sanskrit" fall in this category. I have met people who hold Masters and Ph.Ds in Sanskrit and they can't hold a basic conversation in Sanskrit. On the other hand if one wants to be able to read, write and speak the language then you absolutely need to engage in producing content (verbal and written).

> However, Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis expounds that language acquisition occurs only during exposure to new language and not while speaking.

I think exposure and actively speaking are the wrong categories - your learn a language by using it to participate in a common experience with another human being. For this, you both have to use the same protocol, and at the beginning, you have to figure out this protocol using a simpler fallback feedback protocol. This is something I am currently realizing as a father of a one-year old. This involves of course exposure and speaking, but I strongly doubt that you could learn a language just by listening to it and re-producing the words. I expect this would only result in text/speech resembling GPT-2.

I also think that you can have a common experience without actively producing text or speech, for example by watching a movie / TV show were you want to follow the story and participate in the lives of the actors. In fact, I know many people who effortlessly learned a second language by watching foreign movies and TV shows for years.

Yes and no. I’m someone who took krashen to heart and learned almost exclusively though reading. What I’ve found is that it’s possible to understand everything as long as it’s written or spoken very slowly and clearly but this is a different thing to understanding the spoken language at a normal speaking pace. It’s too fast and at that speed often sound alone is not clear enough to distinguish words. For example if you took a recording and cropped the audio just before and after each word I think there will be many words you will not recognize out of context.

I think the way that we are able to process speech at that speed is that we essentially guess what words are coming next, which is really only possible if you’re able to construct the sentence yourself. If you stop a sentence at a random point a native speaker will be able to predict the kind of words that will come next, if not the exact words. Another bit of evidence for this theory is that if someone says something very unexpected and out of context we often won’t understand what they’ve said.

Now it’s possible that you could achieve this ability only through input and not through production but I believe that it will be much less efficient.

After multiple full semesters in junior high & high school, the things I remember pertained to what our teachers required us to do to navigate being in class. We needed to speak in the language we were learning to open our books, notebooks, go to the bathroom, etc. The rest is mostly forgotten. Later, in the hospitality business, I picked up more real spanish than I ever did in school.

Language is not a single skill. There are passive skills: reading and listening and active: writing and speaking. One can develop passive skills by being a (mostly) passive consumer. I've improved my speech comprehension a lot by listening to podcasts. It doesn't help me to speak, because it is a different (though somewhat related) skill.

Is it true according to Vedas the Hindu religious books sudras are forbidden to learn and hear them as it is written in Sanskrit. Do you have any recommendations of the English translation of the Vedas ?

No, it has nothing to do with Sanskrit.

They're not forbidden to learn the meaning of Vedas. That is universal to all, as evidenced by the Dharma-Butcher - a butcher by profession who solves all philosophical doubts of saints. And he did speak in Sanskrit to the Rishis.

What they're forbidden is to chant the Vedas with original incantation. Because those chants have the power to invoke deities who control the forces of nature itself.

This is no different from restricting access to firearms for the general public. While most citizens shouldn't operate them, they are entitled to the protection offered by others who wield them. And those who wield them must have extreme restraint.

Brahmins, are known for self-control, patience, begging for alms, vegetarianism, and study of scriptures. Atleast, that was the case until a few generations ago. Now, they've left their traditional professions and gone into the IT industry, so they too lost the qualities/restraint needed to be entrusted with Veda mantras.

> Brahmins, are known for self-control, patience, begging for alms

When one has self-control why should they beg ? Its contradictory ?

they SUBSIST on alms - meaning they're not supposed to earn a means of livelihood by themselves (like others do) - and that is precisely a result of them having self-control.

The scope of the Hindu Scriptures are vast. As such a proper guide is needed to help the enthusiast navigate them. I highly recommend Windows into the Infinite: A Guide to the Hindu Scriptures by Barbara Powell to every student.

Coming to The Vedas themselves, they are quite voluminous and make for a very dry reading. The classic english translations are the ones by Ralph T.H. Griffith. Recently Bibek Debroy has translated The Vedas into english though i believe it is highly abridged and simplified. This might make a good starting point.

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