A touching article! I have enjoyed similar times with my grandpa. On the topic of Cobol, I simply don't understand why people hate it so much. It has a shallow learning curve like Python, is self-documenting enough that one doesn't need to write a bunch of text, and is available on every conceivable architecture, with great performance. I personally wrote a payroll for an entire factory on a B1800 with 128K of memory and a 10MB hard disk! So what's to complain? In my mind, Java is deader than Cobol!
This is a shoddy article, and conflates unrelated issues. First, it wasn’t a software issue at all that grounded the plane. Second, Boeing has categorically said that MCAS
This has been an incredible discussion, thank you all for contributing. I hope my original point was made, which was that there is often bias when the western world talks about “ancient”, and I place the blame squarely on the imperialistic british for that. The other issue I want to point out is that there is a certain arrogance that the linguistic academia has as it relates to traditional scholars by regularly discounting their knowledge and assuming their own superiority. Not trying to change anyone’s beliefs, just an opinion I am expressing. I am going to drop out not for want of willingness to engage, but because this discussion is devolving into familiar patterns of debate. All I can say as a practitioner is that when I was taught, I was actually taught the “correct way” and the differences so I was always aware. There is an academic rigor in traditional teaching that Western academia seems to be unaware of.
You are almost completely wrong. How do you account for the precision of Panini as the previous commenter pointed out? How do you know to postulate that? There is NO other formalized grammar akin to Panini, so don’t judge Samskruta by other so called Indo European standards!
It is NOT Sanskrit, which was foisted on the world by the british. Please be respectful and call it by it real name, given by Panini which literally codified and formalized it.
I don't understand why an academic linguist is more qualified than a traditionally educated scholar in India, who has deep knowledge of the classics. I don't deny that there were likely some influences, but the care and precision with I was taught recitation is something I have not encountered in any other discipline. I am an engineer, but if I start from the Ashtadhyayi, I don't see how things could have changed much.
How fossilized? While it is not used as an everyday language, there is a yet growing library of literature, and vigorous philosophical debate that happens in Samskruta. BTW, an unrelated rant, the other thing that grinds on me is that the Ganga river is ALWAYS referred as Ganges (another anglicization)! Ganga is easier to pronounce, so why did that get anglicized, I wonder?
In classical recitation, with ghanapatha and other techniques, I would expect that pronunciation is strict, meters are accounted for, and things have remained relatively unchanged in the way the Vedas and Upanishads are recited. Unfortunately, there is little exposure of the rigorous training in the Western world.
You mean “What did ancient European languages sound like” perhaps? I would submit that Samskruta (NOT the anclicised Sanskrit) sounds exactly like how it did in ancient times. How come there is no discussion of that at all?