Hello,
Reading about classical languages and all they entail I came accross Sanskrit.
To be honest since learning these types of languages require certain amount of time there's got to be some priority before investing on them.
I was convinced about Latin and Greek. In fact any ancient language must have something valuable to offer that makes worth studying or spending time. There's chinese with crazy amount of pictograms to remember, arabic with its insane verb system, etc.
Latin and Greek does have a special appeal. Another aspect about learning these languages it's the type of syntax how they express things with declensions and so on. Coming from a language without declensions I find curious this fact.
I did read other languages with declensions, the craziest of them taking the crown being finish.
But again Latin and Greek have something special, perhaps with their literari corpus, besides having a long time in use and cultural legacy in general. I think these are all valid points. Arabic seems to have a massive legacy as well but there's no simphony associated with it. Again it's about settling for one, if I had many lives or where super intelligent I'd gladly learn several, russian seems quite intriguing. Sadly I only have one life.
While doing some research I came across this language called Sanskrit. Well, it quickly descended into what it seems a contest for the superior languge title.
It sorta became discouraged by a few claims circulating online:
http://stephenknapp.info/sanskrit_its_importance_to_language.htm
With all respects and avoiding bashing Sanskrit might have its merits, however it's hard to reconcile a few things.
I set out to find out the magic about it and watch the first minutes of some vedas in youtube. At first it does sound weird, something like this:
'yadadaydayad prataparaparat yadad mbratprata trata trabprata...'
And the high pitch chant is accompanied by a odd instrument equally high pitched in trance mode.
Then I tried to listen to some indian classical song, but results for this yields mostly more chants.
Who are the Bachs, Mozarts, Vivaldis of India? I would love to know and get to know their music.
There is one big oddity, if Sanskrit was so supperior why in 30.000 years never created a full orchestra? Or is the western orchestra an inferior art?
I am not disgressing here. The reason I bring up music is because the fact that one of the Sanskrit claims is its vowels and consonants represent human's FULL range of human sound. The frequencies of God or something like that. Would it be natural that an advance instruments would have been created long ago??
The fact is that Hindu/Tamil/etc music has failed to catch my interest, unlike Russian music with it's very melodic tunes for instance. Without speaking Russian their music was able to enthrall me something Indian has failed.
Another fact is that pretty much all Asians, except for Japanese, music is high pitch accompanied with what it seems to be a primitive form of violin, a bowl with strings.
Again this comes down to language so my question why would be Sanskrit be superior if it has failed to produced a piano in its thousand years of existence (some claim millions years, even pre-cambrian).
This question could be shallow but whatever is created it comes from it's people, their language and their legacy.
A more concrete issue that I want to ask is in the above quotes:
Looking at Sanskrit grammar it ovbiously insane, it's verb system it's gigantic with crazy amount of moods and what not. I am ok with this.
But again how exactly is Sanskrit more perfect than Greek and Latin? If anyone here is familiar the linguistics of these three examples and can give a concrete explanation I would appreciate it.
To be honest Sanskrit phonetially falls short of greek and latin. Again I am not bashing but looking at the words of the three Sanskrit looks like 'adradpdadrayadra upradutatadrap yadrar'. While both Greek and Latin have a more balanced mixture of sounds.
Then there's the script while Chinese, arabic and japanese are visually pleasent and Sanskrit looks like a down syndrome alphabet, a mix between a hieroglyphic and a character.
There are two a:
अ and आ, as opposed to simply add an accent to differenciate like some European languages.
इ and ई short and long i
उ and ऊ short and long u
Where's the scientific basis of this language here between short and long? If it was scientific wouldn't it been more LOGICAL to apply a single rule to denote short and long?
Also weird vowels that seem to brake the laws of physics (language in this case). Consonant-vowels:
ऋ and ॠ notice how hard is to visually differenciate them, so much for perfection here. They had zillions of years to fix it though.
ओ and औ <-- how to write the O. More like a lolwut? So I have to get convinced that ओ is more perfect than our O?? That by reading ओ I will reach a higher level of conciousness??
I kid not but one time I read that, in the absence of pen and paper, vedas were written by the yogis with banana peels thrown on dirt. That would explain the odd banana like shapes of Sanskrit letters.
One of the claims that Sanskrit is superior is because its sheer numbers of everything, 64 letters in the alphabet!!
Well I wont get in the consonants. A language with such a full range of everything suprisingly manages to sound high pitched all the time.
'nyanyanyanynaynaynanynaynay'
So let's repeat this quote:
Now let's get into its corpus. Sanskrit appears to consist of Vedas and the main book is Mahabaratta. Are there not authors like Plato, real historians like Thucidides (not historians about the gods), or different styles of writing other than poems?
Let's say I do decide to take up Sanskrit, what will I read? What I see on internet is the kazillions of gods, one blue skinned, etc. This is fine, greek and latin too have mythical characters but they offer OTHER stuff to pick from. This is from the literay standpoint.
From what I see on youtube vids is that learning Sanskrit it will get to a point where I will stop listening to classical music, give up all art, culture, etc. Put a cloth on my private parts, mark my forehead with paint sit down in front of a fire with some other chaps, and start chanting in high pitch with the tune of a primitive violin also high pitched.
'dardrapratatra hamadramatrap viyatramadptatatahprrarta'
I am sure it dose have its merits, yet...
IS SANSKRIT worth over Greek and Latin? This is my question.
This is another comical claim that crops up on the webs, that the vedas have embedded ALL science known to manking and yonder down to quantum physics. Sanskrit it's supposed to be supperior due to this fact? As opposed to western authors that wrote scientific treatises, even arabs where into writing scientific treatises.
Either I am stupid or spiritually lesser but from a practical standpoint a concise treatise seems more practical than writing it in fictional poetry.
Lets take an architect and wants to build a house. Imagine the difference of having to learn the shapes with Euclidean geometry book as opposed to a square shape being described in form of a war between blue skinned gods.
I am not trying to bash anything here, but the Vedas can have all the science in them, but truth is that neither China nor India could have space and nuclear technology without active Russian transfer.
And again, musically never where able to create a piano and their flutes never reached western levels of sophistication.
What people think?
On another note, during my research it quickly got out of hand and found out about other fringe pseudo-languages, experimental ones, etc.
This one, fifth-columnist Esperanto language is also scientifically proven:
The common trend here is that everything is being pitched against Greek and Latin as the ultimate confirmation that their are superior.
Sorry for the long post but this matter was nagging me.
thank you.
Reading about classical languages and all they entail I came accross Sanskrit.
To be honest since learning these types of languages require certain amount of time there's got to be some priority before investing on them.
I was convinced about Latin and Greek. In fact any ancient language must have something valuable to offer that makes worth studying or spending time. There's chinese with crazy amount of pictograms to remember, arabic with its insane verb system, etc.
Latin and Greek does have a special appeal. Another aspect about learning these languages it's the type of syntax how they express things with declensions and so on. Coming from a language without declensions I find curious this fact.
I did read other languages with declensions, the craziest of them taking the crown being finish.
But again Latin and Greek have something special, perhaps with their literari corpus, besides having a long time in use and cultural legacy in general. I think these are all valid points. Arabic seems to have a massive legacy as well but there's no simphony associated with it. Again it's about settling for one, if I had many lives or where super intelligent I'd gladly learn several, russian seems quite intriguing. Sadly I only have one life.
While doing some research I came across this language called Sanskrit. Well, it quickly descended into what it seems a contest for the superior languge title.
It sorta became discouraged by a few claims circulating online:
http://stephenknapp.info/sanskrit_its_importance_to_language.htm
Some others claims retrieve from various blogs, comments:
As it can be seen Sanskrit is supposedly superior in all ways, bloggers also goad people that to loarn Sanskrit you have to believe it, like believing in God, and that you will reach automagically another level of consciousness, etc, ...
With all respects and avoiding bashing Sanskrit might have its merits, however it's hard to reconcile a few things.
I set out to find out the magic about it and watch the first minutes of some vedas in youtube. At first it does sound weird, something like this:
'yadadaydayad prataparaparat yadad mbratprata trata trabprata...'
And the high pitch chant is accompanied by a odd instrument equally high pitched in trance mode.
Then I tried to listen to some indian classical song, but results for this yields mostly more chants.
Who are the Bachs, Mozarts, Vivaldis of India? I would love to know and get to know their music.
There is one big oddity, if Sanskrit was so supperior why in 30.000 years never created a full orchestra? Or is the western orchestra an inferior art?
I am not disgressing here. The reason I bring up music is because the fact that one of the Sanskrit claims is its vowels and consonants represent human's FULL range of human sound. The frequencies of God or something like that. Would it be natural that an advance instruments would have been created long ago??
The fact is that Hindu/Tamil/etc music has failed to catch my interest, unlike Russian music with it's very melodic tunes for instance. Without speaking Russian their music was able to enthrall me something Indian has failed.
Another fact is that pretty much all Asians, except for Japanese, music is high pitch accompanied with what it seems to be a primitive form of violin, a bowl with strings.
Again this comes down to language so my question why would be Sanskrit be superior if it has failed to produced a piano in its thousand years of existence (some claim millions years, even pre-cambrian).
This question could be shallow but whatever is created it comes from it's people, their language and their legacy.
A more concrete issue that I want to ask is in the above quotes:
I haven't been able to find a clear cut explanation about these two claims, it exists a book something like 'Analitical Comparison ...' but it costs over 100$.
Looking at Sanskrit grammar it ovbiously insane, it's verb system it's gigantic with crazy amount of moods and what not. I am ok with this.
But again how exactly is Sanskrit more perfect than Greek and Latin? If anyone here is familiar the linguistics of these three examples and can give a concrete explanation I would appreciate it.
To be honest Sanskrit phonetially falls short of greek and latin. Again I am not bashing but looking at the words of the three Sanskrit looks like 'adradpdadrayadra upradutatadrap yadrar'. While both Greek and Latin have a more balanced mixture of sounds.
Then there's the script while Chinese, arabic and japanese are visually pleasent and Sanskrit looks like a down syndrome alphabet, a mix between a hieroglyphic and a character.
There are two a:
अ and आ, as opposed to simply add an accent to differenciate like some European languages.
इ and ई short and long i
उ and ऊ short and long u
Where's the scientific basis of this language here between short and long? If it was scientific wouldn't it been more LOGICAL to apply a single rule to denote short and long?
Also weird vowels that seem to brake the laws of physics (language in this case). Consonant-vowels:
ऋ and ॠ notice how hard is to visually differenciate them, so much for perfection here. They had zillions of years to fix it though.
ओ and औ <-- how to write the O. More like a lolwut? So I have to get convinced that ओ is more perfect than our O?? That by reading ओ I will reach a higher level of conciousness??
I kid not but one time I read that, in the absence of pen and paper, vedas were written by the yogis with banana peels thrown on dirt. That would explain the odd banana like shapes of Sanskrit letters.
One of the claims that Sanskrit is superior is because its sheer numbers of everything, 64 letters in the alphabet!!
Well I wont get in the consonants. A language with such a full range of everything suprisingly manages to sound high pitched all the time.
'nyanyanyanynaynaynanynaynay'
So let's repeat this quote:
Yes all that without an orchestra.
Now let's get into its corpus. Sanskrit appears to consist of Vedas and the main book is Mahabaratta. Are there not authors like Plato, real historians like Thucidides (not historians about the gods), or different styles of writing other than poems?
Let's say I do decide to take up Sanskrit, what will I read? What I see on internet is the kazillions of gods, one blue skinned, etc. This is fine, greek and latin too have mythical characters but they offer OTHER stuff to pick from. This is from the literay standpoint.
From what I see on youtube vids is that learning Sanskrit it will get to a point where I will stop listening to classical music, give up all art, culture, etc. Put a cloth on my private parts, mark my forehead with paint sit down in front of a fire with some other chaps, and start chanting in high pitch with the tune of a primitive violin also high pitched.
'dardrapratatra hamadramatrap viyatramadptatatahprrarta'
I am sure it dose have its merits, yet...
IS SANSKRIT worth over Greek and Latin? This is my question.
This is another comical claim that crops up on the webs, that the vedas have embedded ALL science known to manking and yonder down to quantum physics. Sanskrit it's supposed to be supperior due to this fact? As opposed to western authors that wrote scientific treatises, even arabs where into writing scientific treatises.
Either I am stupid or spiritually lesser but from a practical standpoint a concise treatise seems more practical than writing it in fictional poetry.
Lets take an architect and wants to build a house. Imagine the difference of having to learn the shapes with Euclidean geometry book as opposed to a square shape being described in form of a war between blue skinned gods.
I am not trying to bash anything here, but the Vedas can have all the science in them, but truth is that neither China nor India could have space and nuclear technology without active Russian transfer.
And again, musically never where able to create a piano and their flutes never reached western levels of sophistication.
What people think?
On another note, during my research it quickly got out of hand and found out about other fringe pseudo-languages, experimental ones, etc.
This one, fifth-columnist Esperanto language is also scientifically proven:
Oh man!! Backed up by psychologists and following neuropsychological laws!!
The common trend here is that everything is being pitched against Greek and Latin as the ultimate confirmation that their are superior.
Sorry for the long post but this matter was nagging me.
thank you.
