Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.
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.