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Comment by JoeDaDude | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure language learners all over have felt this way. Once one starts learning another tongue, one realizes that languages do not exist in isolation, they are part of a larger culture and the language comes with customs, traditions, norms, and even beliefs from that culture. In learning a language, you internalize that culture and, even if just a tiny bit, develop an identity as a member of that culture.

Phoenix Ho said it better than I can is this video:

Learning Languages Ruined My Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ_4gzoDDAE

View on HN

Very True.

This is particularly true when one translates/studies philosophical texts where there are lots of abstract concepts to interpret and more often than not if one doesn't understand the culture and everything it entails, one will make a mess of it.

> In learning a language, you internalize that culture and, even if just a tiny bit, develop an identity as a member of that culture.

This actually explains how Indians practice "Unity in Diversity" via their shared culture. For example, i grew up learning 4 languages viz; Tamil (mother tongue and 1st language), Bengali (since i grew up in West Bengal), English (medium of instruction and 2nd language) and Hindi (3rd language in school). It has given me a certain breadth of mind to appreciate our differences and yet have a shared common identity. A lot of Indians have similar multiple language upbringing and hence it is one of the reasons we can adapt and be successful anywhere in the World.

Indian philosophy is not translingual though, its all written in one language, Sanskrit, and translated from that language. If anything, Indian philosophy demonstrates hierarchal dominance in its cultural context.

That is not quite true.

It so happened that much of what has survived under the rubric "Hinduism" (itself an umbrella term for a whole gamut of philosophies, religious beliefs, rituals etc. and everything in between) has been through Sanskrit texts. It does not mean that all the concepts/ideas originated in that language domain. This is why you have the many schools of Hindu Philosophy categorized as orthodox (six recognized) vs. unorthodox (three recognized) and there are still more schools (notably many Tantric philosophies) not recognized under either of the above categories. Given the bewildering diversity of languages in the Indian Subcontinent it is almost certain that Sanskrit texts recast/reformulated philosophies/concepts/ideas from other languages (eg. Tamil and Sanskrit).

The situation is analogous to what happened after the Scientific Revolution where knowledge from German/French/Other European languages got disseminated via the English language through colonialism to the wider world.

Its possible, but still points towards, as I said, an overall hierarchy rather than a given multiplicity.

There is no intrinsic "overall hierarchy" but merely a "a posteriori" appearance of one.

There is no thing in itself here either to which one might ascribe a particular quality. There is a history of violence expressed through the language itself; I am doing my analysis immanently. When I say hierarchy I don't mean hierarchy outside the text.

Not sure what you are trying to say here. My point was that the fact that most Hindu Philosophy today is studied via the Sanskrit language does not mean all the philosophies/concepts/ideas originated in that medium and by extension in the culture that gave birth to it. It is from an amalgamation of various cultures and their languages from the Indian Subcontinent which has been expressed through Sanskrit texts. One can see this in the evolution of the language itself from Vedic to Classical Sanskrit and influences from Prakrit and Dravidian languages.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit for details.

Also see Classical Languages of India here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

This is all given, however, through Sanskrit, so you are proving to me that the language itself shows the hierarchal dominance that the culture imposed, and that hierarchal dominance shows itself in the philosophy.

No it does not and that is your erroneous understanding. The proof is self-evident because none of the myriads of other languages in the Indian Subcontinent have been supplanted by Sanskrit. In fact there is a theory that Sanskrit was never a spoken language for common folk but merely a written one due to its precision. Also there exists multiple scripts to express Sanskrit in other Indian languages eg. "Grantha" script for Sanskrit->Tamil. All South Indian Classical Languages use their own scripts to write Sanskrit.

The linguistic complexity amongst the various states in India is very unique and hence simplistic notions of language dominance do not apply to India as a whole but varies from state to state.

The linguistic complexity does not exist in the philosophy. You are taking the modern state of India and imposing it on a language which neither originated in the country of “India” nor even had a direct relation to its contemporary history. The Brahmanical laws were absolute—the elite learned Sanskrit, developed the philosophy and literary culture, and justified their own rule through it. That entirely predates the colonial rule which formed the very “diversity” you see today. There was no recognition of any authority outside that produced through the text.

You have missed a lot of what i said/implied. First i used the phrase "Indian Subcontinent" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_subcontinent) which geographically includes much more than the current nation state of India. Second, the linguistic diversity in the Indian Subcontinent is thousands of years old, well predating the arrival of Muslims/British into India. In fact, the modern Indian state lines were drawn based on linguistic identity which has always existed. So i am not arguing from the modern Indian state pov but quite the opposite.

Your statement that Sanskrit did not originate in the Indian Subcontinent is controversial and is not settled. But regardless, there were groups who had Sanskrit as their lingua-franca and who specialized in orally transmitting and then writing down their own (and borrowed from other cultures) philosophies and worldviews. The other linguistic groups in India did not do it to the same degree and hence you have the current situation where it appears that all knowledge only came through Sanskrit one-way. This is the fallacy that i am pointing out. Note that this is quite apart from what the content of the Sanskrit texts themselves may/may not convey; that is a different matter and has to be looked at through a different lens.

yes. so there should be, for human languages, some variation of that Alan Perlis quote, that goes something like: a (programming) language that doesn't change the way you think, isn't worth learning. if not, someone should make one up.

I speak three languages on top of my own native language and never felt that way at all. In my opinion it's just a weird idea coming from people who like to overthink things.

My problem is that I love languages but I hate people, which makes me completely half-ass the learning process by detaching the language from the culture.

Its more likely that you hate what you see in people than the people themselves.

How is that different?

By the feeling, it's the same. But it's an important distinction. You cannot change "the people", but you can change yourself. And that is very different. In the first, you are subservient of something much larger than you, and the second is a world of possibilities. Turning your thinking around enables you to have your best possible experience of your own life - or so they say.

> In the first, you are subservient of something much larger than you, and the second is a world of possibilities.

The latter is a much more grim perspective. What it means is that, if you've been putting all your effort, all your effort is still not enough, and you objectively suck and you will never stop being useless trash. But if you consider people as an unpredictable, unstoppable force, then it's much easier to accept, and just make your way around it. Like weather. It really sucks when I want to go out but then exactly at this moment a huge storm breaks out, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I'd better adjust my life to the fact that weather sometimes sucks and that's it. While I could've planned for bad weather, at its core the fact that weather sometimes sucks is not my fault and there's nothing I can do about it.

If you lived in a place with huge storms all the time, to live joyously would mean to affirm that life. But people are not terrible.

Exactly like weather. Grimness has almost nothing to do with the subject here. What I want to communicate is specifically not about how the world is, but about what we do with our experience in it. And how we react to that experience, inside and outside. What I would like to put forward is that we cannot substantially change the world, or the people, but we can change ourselves, and with that, how we experience the world - and ourselves within it.

I would like to add that I'm not on a high horse here. I too suck at this. But I do think that it is a worthy effort, and something that is a Good Thing for the self, and to whom and whatever comes into contact with that person too.

>Phoenix Ho

Spelled Hou, per the video.

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