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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5471 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 1 of 29 01 May 2011 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
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In August I started a Sanskrit course at Oslo University, and have now worked out a plan to learn Sanskrit, Pali,
Chinese and Tibetan over the next few years. My reason for choosing these languages is that I want to study Buddhist texts. Sanskrit and Pali are Indian languages. Pali was basically a simplified version of Sanskrit based on the way ordinary people spoke, whereas Sanskrit was the polished, literary language used for composing philosophical, religious, poetic and dramatic texts. If you can read Sanskrit you essentially get Pali for free. The vocabulary's basically the same, with a series of regular simplifications of the phonetics (e.g. karma becomes kamma, satya becomes sacca etc.), and the grammar's similar but simpler. The textbook we've been using at the university is Maurer's "The Sanskrit Language", which I think is excellent. From the second lesson you're reading simplified authentic texts, rather than the collections of disjointed sentences that most Sanskrit textbooks give you. Right from the beginning you're getting acquainted with some of the classics of Sanskrit literature, and I found being able to work my way through these kinds of text from such an early stage was really motivating. Over the next academic year I'm planning to read as much Sanskrit as I can, using bilingual editions of texts from the Clay Sanskrit Library. The Clay Sanskrit Library books are beautifully produced, and well designed for the intermediate student. I'm also planning to start looking at some Pali texts once I feel a bit more comfortable with the standard Classical Sanskrit. This summer I'm taking an intensive summer course in Tibetan at the University of Virginia, which I'm really looking forward to. I work full time as a teacher, so it's always tricky to find time for language study as well as everything else that's going on. Having 6 weeks where I can focus completely on learning a language is going to be fantastic! I'm hoping the course will give me a good basis in conversational and literary Tibetan, so that I can carry on studying on my own. The texts I'm interested in reading in Tibetan are first and foremost translations of Sanskrit texts, so knowing Sanskrit as well as Tibetan is really useful. (In most cases the original Sanskrit versions of Buddhist texts have been lost, so the texts only exist in Tibetan and/or Chinese translation.) In the next academic year, as well as getting stuck in to reading Sanskrit literature, I'm going to be taking courses at Oslo University in Modern Mandarin and Classical Chinese. Again, my ultimate goal is to be able to read Buddhist texts. I'm interested in being able to compare the Tibetan and Chinese versions of texts, and the Sanskrit version(s) where they have survived. Once I feel I have a solid enough grasp of these languages I'll apply for a PhD in the area of Buddhist translation. I've studied some translation theory before, and I'm particularly interested in the ideas of domesticisation and foreignisation. In other words, when you translate a text from another culture do you try and make the translation read like an original text, adapting it to fit the new cultural context, or do you highlight the fact that this is a text from another, foreign culture, and expect the reader to understand the text on its own cultural terms. The Tibetans and the Chinese had quite different approaches to these problems, and I think it would be really interesting to compare the approaches used in various periods of Buddhist history to what's going on today with the transmission of Buddhism to Western cultures and the translation of Buddhist texts into European languages. I'll also learn Japanese at some point, both to be able to study the transmission of Buddhism from China and Korea to Japan, and because a lot of the best modern scholarship in Buddhist Studies is being done in Japan and published in Japanese. I'd be really interested in hearing from anyone else who's learning Sanskrit/Pali/Tibetan/Chinese/Japanese in order to study Buddhist texts. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6524 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 29 01 May 2011 at 3:36pm | IP Logged |
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You've certainly got your work cut out for you; that's a lot of difficult languages. But you seem to have the passion
required to persevere. I tip my hat and lift my glass to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5976 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 4 of 29 01 May 2011 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
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Pali is cool :). As far as I know the earliest Buddhist texts were written in Pali ( some centuries after the "death" of the Buddha, initially it was an oral tradition ).
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5982 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 29 01 May 2011 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck that sounds like an exciting topic
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7165 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 6 of 29 01 May 2011 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
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Given your goals, you may as well skip Modern Chinese entirely...It's a lot of extra work added on to an already monumental undertaking, and it really won't contribute anything; the distance between a Modern Chinese novel and the Chinese Buddhist canon is about as great as the distance between two related languages can be. Of course, the distance between Classical Chinese and Buddhist Chinese is pretty substantial as well, but it's still the best preparation available (That could change if Stephan Hodge's Buddhist Chinese textbook ever gets published, but I wouldn't hold my breath). You can always learn Modern Chinese later if you choose, but I assume you'd like to start your PhD sometime this decade.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5471 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 7 of 29 01 May 2011 at 6:08pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for all the supportive comments:)
@Cthulhu, I'm not planning to do all that much Modern Chinese, but I was advised that it would be a good idea to do the first semester or two in order to learn the basic vocabulary and grammar. After that I'll be focusing on Classical Chinese though... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5533 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 29 01 May 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged |
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I've studied Pali in the past, so good luck. I'll be following your progress.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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