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Latin, greek, other, 4 training the mind | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6667 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 9 of 24 24 April 2009 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Among the Indo-European languages, Sanskrit seems to be the most complex.
Latin also is highly complex; translations from Latin are usually significally longer in the target language. I have only studied very little (Ancient) Greek, but it seemed somewhat less compact to me than Latin and its syntax more straightforward. However, the Greek verbs are incredibly complex. Turkish and Hungarian are both very logical and complex languages. And then of course Arabic, which is completely different from English in all regards. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| madalieninvader Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5709 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 24 24 April 2009 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I thank everybody for their input. Much food for thought.
Sanskrit!!! Yes. My "western" mind left out this beauty the whole time. +It's actually spoken by people (not many but still) and in the same manner as a millenia or two ago +Computer programmers wanted to try to use it as a metalanguage in machine translation because it's regular yet expressive and powerful +highly inflected and definitely not like English, doesn't even seem like Hindi except maybe some vocab +all the different sounds +completely phonetic script!!! +wealth of interesting literature and the Bhagavad Gita (in English) has been on my to-read list forever +would definitely be an intellectual challenge for me From what I can tell it seems compact enough. The only minus is it wouldn't be as modernly useful as say Russian or something, but Sanskrit is almost exactly what I was looking for. Also I wonder how curious a spectacle I'd be if I wanted to practice it as a living language in India, me being a white skinned almost-atheist and all. I don't have to advertise my almost-atheism. I've heard some stories about how anglo-saxon looking people are regarded who speak Mandarin and Japanese in China and Japan. No one learns Sanskrit though unless they're as weird errr, as unique as me. One reason I'm so obsessed with compactness is it seems like I'm always half ignoring all the in, to, of, from, by, at, etc., in English (my native) or Esperanto. Maybe this is just the way my mind works but I seemed to have more trouble with the in, to, by, etc., in L2s and L3s too. It's like my brain just rejects it as valuable important input. I know Latin has these too but it still seems more compact. The only thing is, because I was thinking Greek, I got myself all pumped up to read Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus in the original. Maybe I'll have to learn Sanskrit, Koine and Attic. Anyway I appreciate any new contributions along the same lines to the thread and thank everyone for their thoughts. Edited by madalieninvader on 25 April 2009 at 12:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| madalieninvader Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5709 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 24 25 April 2009 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Also does anyone know if Buddhists use this language (Sanskrit) in their liturgy or is it more of a Hindu or Indian nationalist thing?
Don't mean to hit any nerves here but Buddhism seems more open to a perpetual doubting almost-atheist like myself. I actually have been meditating on and off for roughly two years anyway but don't buy into any what I'd call mythological stuff. When I was reading about Buddhism all I ever heard about was Pali. I still don't know anything about Pali. Again, any input is appreciated and the previous input has been valued. Edited by madalieninvader on 25 April 2009 at 12:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5901 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 13 of 24 25 April 2009 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Some important later Buddhist commentaries were written in Sanskrit. Among the profusion of treasures bestowed by Sanskrit is the Vedanta, which I think you'll find agreeable and enlightening. By the time you're immersed studying the great Indian literature though (along with Kant, Fichte and Hegel) you'll come to realize the folly of submitting to the faith/atheism duality. Edited by JuanM on 25 April 2009 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6150 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 14 of 24 25 April 2009 at 6:34am | IP Logged | ||
Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit AFAIK, most Buddhist traditions have to a greater or lesser degree some amount of mysticism. Advanced tantric meditations in vajrayana for instance, involve visualization of various deities. Theravada traditions on the other hand though, seem rather more neutral in this regard. Many Mahayana sutras on the other hand, assign powers like omnipotence and omniscience to the Buddha; later interpretations of these sutras however, might instead be more panentheistic. Of course, it's up to you whether to interpret such practices as constituting belief in supernatural entities. Visualizations of this sort have been used for various purposes by ancient cultures (I believe the Inuit have a similar practice to Tibetan tummo meditation for controlling body temperature), including the memory methods in Europe which were taught in universities up to the 17th century. As for Indian Sanskrit philosophy in a Buddhist tradition, Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā comes to mind. For a somewhat similar tradition in Greek philosophy, look to Pyrrhonism. Adrian Kuzminski's book on this is quite helpful. As for these older Indo-European languages being more compact, well, the number of words used is usually lesser than in English, but in terms of syllables, I doubt they are much more concise. If you really want an example of how far a natural human language can be concise, look at Classical Chinese. Edited by Alkeides on 25 April 2009 at 6:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 15 of 24 25 April 2009 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
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With Hindus it's all about respect. Learn Sanskrit and you are showing them respect. They'll love you for it.
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 24 25 April 2009 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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The most logical language is Lojban which is based on predicate logic. It can be used
to expressed things perfectly with no ambiguity. It is however not a natural language and is not extensively used. I wouldn't personally bother with the language but I thought I'd mention it as it is very linguistically interesting Edited by zerothinking on 25 April 2009 at 7:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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