Learn Sanskrit Online

http://www.learnsanskrit.org/

by yati • 13 years ago

78 79 13 years ago

learnsanskrit.org

Ihmahr• 13 years ago

Php errors everywhere!

r4vik• 13 years ago

no, that's Sanskrit

r0h1n9• 13 years ago

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

s-topper2• 13 years ago

Why not?

r0h1n9• 13 years ago

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.

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.

ximeng• 13 years ago

They try to answer that question here:

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."

r0h1n9• 13 years ago

"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.

primitivesuave• 13 years ago

Many Hindus chant in Sanskrit for religious/ceremonial purposes, e.g. Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita is often chanted before eating a meal (http://www.asitis.com/15/). It's useful to understand what the Sanskrit words mean, although there are English translations for virtually all Sanskrit texts.

r0h1n9• 13 years ago

If you're talking about the shlokas most commonly recited by average people, they may amount to maybe 10-20 lines. Learning their meaning will take at best one hour of research/effort.

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.

slaxman• 13 years ago

I am a ployglot and know several indian and foreign languages. My favourite is Sanskrit. Why? Once I learnt Sanskrit, esp. the grammar, learning other languages was really easy. You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.

chattoraj4• 13 years ago

You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.

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

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages

donniezazen• 13 years ago

How do you practice or make yourself not forget the several languages you know? I find it really hard to be proficient in a language unless you live among native speakers?

angerman• 13 years ago

Could you please elaborate on this a little more? How did German and Finnish derive from Sanskrit? Could you give examples?

yati5• 13 years ago

From your comments, this is like asking "Why would someone, programmer or not, want to learn Lisp online?". The answer: because they want to, because they might find it interesting. They don't have to ask you. You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.

melling2• 13 years ago

You can learn Lisp and do real work with it. It has commercial value. It's not some ancient dead language.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.

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.

monster_group• 13 years ago

For the sheer joy of it. I learnt Sanskrit in middle school formally yet superficially. About a year ago I decided I wanted to get rid of the 'superficial' part and devoured several Sanskrit grammar books including this website. It has been a very joyful journey and I feel very happy when I am able to read and understand the only Sanskrit newspaper in the world. I don't know about you but for me that's a good enough reason. Sometimes one makes the journey because the path is so much fun even though the destination may be uninteresting.

cscurmudgeon6• 13 years ago

I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)

ksk2• 13 years ago

The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.

Okay, give me 10 reasons.

kamaal• 13 years ago

>Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.

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.

laichzeit02• 13 years ago

Serious question, how many languages do you know and actively use?

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.

r0h1n9• 13 years ago

Okay, serious answer: I can read and write proficiently in English and Hindi. I can speak proficiently in Malayalam. I can understand or business-converse in Kannada. I can understand about 75% of Tamil conversations. I learned Sanskrit in school. I've tried at various points to learn both French and Spanish using Rosetta Stone, but I gave up after the initial few weeks, probably because I was doing it alone.

Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?

nkuttler3• 13 years ago

For the same reason you have other hobbies, they like it. You obviously wouldn't.

ateevchopra• 13 years ago

Because they say the knowledge of the whole universe is written in sanskrit in the vedas. Thousands of years the Indian sages researched about almost every topic and wrote this vedas. We would have been many years ahead if we could decode those teachings. Many lost, many still to be decoded. If people learn sanskrit, maybe someone will find its life purpose in this and do a big research on the old knowledge. Just saying. Anything is possible. knowledge is never in vain.

RestlessMind• 13 years ago

Why do you want to live?

Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.

jimgardener• 13 years ago

Long time back I was interested in Indian Tantric stuff and found that most English translations (except those by Arthur Avalon) contained too many interpretations by the translator -some of them skewed :).So I got some original Sanskrit texts and tried to translate word by word .I couldn't progress much becoz you cannot understand the meaning of a sentence by just adding up the words- you need to learn the grammer.At that time I wished I had learned the language

involans• 13 years ago

Because it is an enjoyable pursuit. I would agree that it is not the most practical thing to do; but not everything need be practical. Incidentally - this course seems to be one of the better ones I've seen; it actually uses modern phonetic and segmental terminology instead of throwing people straight into sandhi with no explanation of why this happens.

kops• 13 years ago

As an Indian,

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).

the_af2• 13 years ago

"For the joy of it" is probably the most important motive. For archeology is also good, though I assume a serious student of ancient languages won't learn from online guides.

mchaver• 13 years ago

Because they might not have access to offline Sanskrit resources.

tekalon• 13 years ago

As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.

angryJohn• 13 years ago

I learnt sanskrit, when i was in school... very nice language actually.... I like reading short moral stories in sanskrit a lot.....!!!!

wslh• 13 years ago

If you liked this post you might like this incredible sanskrit web site: http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/english-home/

It includes translation of sacred texts.

jaseemabid• 13 years ago

I wish the duolingo guys hire this fellow and make it easy for all of us :/

Techasura• 13 years ago

The point is what would you do after learning or may be spending real good amount of time with it, what is the real need. I learnt sanskrit for more than 6 years and have passed upto threeeteeya(an exam to test your sanskrit skill). When i learn something i should be able to converse about it with many people as i can and help spread the knowledge or information. But learning an old language like sanskrit. What i found after learning the language is there is a lot of history which doesn't fetch any real world gain to my career, my social life, my finances or even recognition from a worldwide community.

chattoraj4• 13 years ago

Listen to this man. Anyone who studies a dead language for “real-world gain” will probably end up disappointed.

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.

rational_indian• 13 years ago

Tritiya just means third.

rlvesco7• 13 years ago

I always thought it was interesting that Sanskrit could almost be a computer language: http://uttishthabharata.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/sanskrit-pr...

wintageeil• 13 years ago

To people who wants to know how scientific Sanskrit language is and also about how we are missing it's essence:

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.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Oh, gosh, the usual Hindutva nonsense. Let me first of all dispel any notion that I don't like learning languages "for fun." See my Hacker News user profile for more details on what languages I have learned. I have learned enough facts about Sanskrit and the various languages that are written in the Devanagari alphabet to know

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.

the_af2• 13 years ago

I know nothing about Sanskrit to verify or refute what you claim, but why the negative attitude? This resource seems good. Maybe people are interested in Sanskrit just for the sake of learning it? Maybe some people want to learn Sanskrit and not other languages of south India, or Estonian, or Modern Standard Chinese.

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.

varchar• 13 years ago

There is large body of ancient Sanskrit literature that is very interesting and ubique. Some of the poetry and prose like Kalidasa, Jayadeva etc. are exquisite.

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.

cscurmudgeon6• 13 years ago

tokenadult is a known Chinese anti-Indian shill.

yati5• 13 years ago

thanks for the enlightening suggestions. But thanks I want to learn Sanskrit. I don't have to justify what I do as long as it doesn't cause harm to someone. Please stop the negativity.

cscurmudgeon6• 13 years ago

Oh, gosh, the usual tokenadult nonsense.

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.

wirrbel• 13 years ago

its great that such a resource exists. However when you want to learn a language that is still used and has similar grammar features you might want to opt for something like icelandic or polish.

Then also Turkish (although not indo-european) might be interesting since it has a really logical and regular grammar.

akprasad• 13 years ago

Oh, hey, I'm on Hacker News.

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.

laichzeit02• 13 years ago

One of the reasons I'd like to, time permitting, learn Sanskrit would be to enjoy the Upanishads, which my favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, regarded so highly:

"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."

Learn Sanskrit Online

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