Learn Sanskrit Online
learnsanskrit.org
learnsanskrit.org
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.
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.
It includes translation of sacred texts.
Of what use is Sanskrit to anyone who learns it?
P.S. I say this as a person who was forced to study Sanskrit in school for three years.
>>>>>>>>There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer.
You can apply that flawed reasoning to pretty much everything. It would've been a perfectly valid question if you had said "Why would I want to learn Sanskrit?". Please don't universalize your opinion by saying things like why would anyone want to learn Sanskrit online or offline.
If you feel that is not the case, please elucidate your reasons. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
You seem to be mistaken that folks would learn a language for just the sake of knowing it. Far from it. Language is just a tool for communication of ideas. There have been some brilliant treatises, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies expressed in Sanskrit. Folks are more interested in accessing the thoughts and works in Sanskrit as opposed being infatuated with the technical aspects of the language.
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, war, sex, death, violence, laughter, beauty, perception, nature, anatomy, urbanity, ritual, desire, food, purpose, meaning, and language, among hundreds of others. Moreover, Sanskrit texts are the repository of non-modern modes of thought, and they present distinct conceptions of the world that are often at odds with the understanding we have today. By learning how people used to think, we better understand both ourselves and the world we have inherited.
"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 or a linguist.
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 hasn't been translated and will probably never be translated. See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_... )
was one of the.. FIFY.
I'm afraid your arguments in favour of learning Sanskrit are as generic and theoretical as most other comments.
I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher or a linguist.
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.
Your claims are a subset of the “everything comes from India” school of BSology.[1]
German is related to Sanskrit but does not descend from it.[2] Finnish belongs to a different language family entirely.[3]
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs
Kinda like how knowing Latin makes it easier to learn Romanic languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanic_languages), but Romanic languages were really derived from Latin.
Do you, the no-nonsense hyper-practical man, smirk at mathematicians who study pure theory?
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.
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 :)
Okay, give me 10 reasons.
(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?
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 languages lack vocabulary for most common objects. We don't have words for mobile phones, cars, buses, microwave ovens etc.. the list is endless. By and large any Indian language today looks like English words connected through that language's grammar.
Nearly all Indian languages are practically useless for any kind of serious work. You can't do any scientific work in it, no serious text books on any topic are ever written in it, You can't use these languages to get any kind of serious work done. In short these language only work for local communication with the help of English vocabulary added to local language.
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 programming for the first time in your life.
Edit: I also want to add that I came across this website in the past http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html where the idea of a highly unambiguous natural language struck me as interesting. Sadly, I've subsequently read a lot of negative comments regarding "vedic" sciences here on HN. Something akin go what the Creationists have tried to do with the bible. But I nevertheless would like to spend a few months looking at Sanskrit grammar and making an opinion about it myself.
Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?
Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.
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).
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.
I'm not aware of what the "usual Hindutva nonsense" is. I'm going to guess there's a group of people in India who think Sanskrit and/or Hindu culture are the best thing since sliced bread. Who cares? When fans of a language, culture (or technology! :P ) are trying to convince you to learn it, they will sometimes make highly biased claims. This is to be expected.
The only thing that would matter to me is if someone claimed this particular resource for learning Sanskrit is not very good, is hard to follow, or has many mistakes.
If you are interested in Yoga, Meditation - you will appreciate the ability study the original texts. Yoga is now a global phenomenon and I personally know many people in the west and elsewhere study Patanjali and other texts.
There is great body of ancient knowledge (like Upanishads) on philosophy, the nature of mind, ego and the true nature one's self which is very unique.
The original texts for the ancient science of Ayurveda are in Sanskrit. There are many good universities in India that offer degrees in Ayurveda and Sanskrit is a prerequisite for studying Ayurveda.
There are several ancient astronomical and mathematical texts in Sanskrit like Sulaba Sutra etc. which are very interesting.
In the Indian tradition all rituals and rites of passage like birth, naming, marriage etc. are in Sanskrit and used on a daily basis although very few people speak the language.
India has an ancient system of classical music which is actively pursued and enjoyed by millions. Many compositions that people learn and sing are in Sanskrit.
I will just counter 5) with http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/46....
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.
Umm. Wat? Care to elaborate more? Any papers? Also, first-order logic has many grammars and different families of syntax. Postfix, prefix, infix, graphical, linear, controlled English-based Attempto Controlled English. It makes absolutely no sense to say Chinese syntax is more logical than Sanskrit.
A language is logical if it has a controlled syntax (at the least, well-defined semantics is the holy grail for AI). Attempto ACE (http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/) and http://www.jfsowa.com/clce/specs.htm are logic languages. Chinese has no controlled syntax. Sanskrit is the only natural language to have a controlled syntax. Chomsky even credits his famous notation to a Sanskrit grammarian, Panini. Does any of your other languages have this advantage?
Since you accuse other HN-ers of being Hindutva posters, can I do the same and accuse you of being a paid Chinese shill? Stop with the unsubstantiated intellectually low-grade vacuous negativity.
Once again, please keep your biases at home and keep HN a civil place. I can't believe your glib uncivil FUD-ish comment is top ranked. Ugh.
One wonders what kind of mind would feverishly advocate for any language to go extinct.
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.
"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."
Then also Turkish (although not indo-european) might be interesting since it has a really logical and regular grammar.