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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>>matahari<<
Why 'wannabe?'
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Joined: Jan 2004
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veteran
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veteran
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Yup. What with a huge vocabulary, a very active manner of compounding, and an absolute love of synonymy, Sanskrit rules!
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Does anyone speak Sanskrit these days, for whatever reasons?
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Joined: Jan 2004
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veteran
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veteran
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Sure, there's lots of folks in India who can speak it. I seem to remember that there's a college in Benares where all instruction is in Sanskrit. And, of course, it's still used as a liturgical language. Somewhere, I have Hamlet translated into Sanskrit. It was done in the '70s. If you'd like to hear some Sanskrit being chanted there's some MP3s on this site: http://sarasvati.tripod.com/veda.htm
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Joined: Mar 2004
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stranger
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stranger
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I guess Sanskrit was NEVER a spoken language. It has always been a literary language. At the times in India when Sanskrit literature was being produced at a prodigious rate, the commoners still spoke languages like Pali, which were phonetically very similar to Sanskrit. It has always been difficult for the common man to pronounce Sanskrit. There's no ban on speaking in Sanskrit though :) News in Sanskrit are still aired on All India Radio! Sanskrit - the language of the Gods, a most rhythmic and mellifluous language.
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Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In Maaori, the Sun is called raa.
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks, jheem and raju. I'm aware of Sanskrit's use as a liturgical language, but I guess I was trying to draw a parallel with Latin, which used to be a spoken language and now is pretty much used only as a lingua franca among Catholic clergy. Oh, there is a radio station in Finland (!) that broadcasts the news in Latin.
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Joined: Mar 2004
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Mar 2004
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Ra - the Egyptian Sun God.
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Joined: Jul 2003
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yes, the coincidence had not escaped me either. If properly macronised, the Maaori word looks more like Ra, since it is then spelled with only one "a".
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Joined: Jan 2004
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veteran
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veteran
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Well, it's true that Classical Sanskrit, at least, is a very artificial language, but probably no more than Classical Latin was. From what I've seen of Pali (and that isn't much), it is a different language than Sanskrit, not just a matter of highfalutin vocab and accent. But I'd always assumed that something very close to Vedic Sasnkrit was spoken at one point. It's just that the embalming process of being a liturgical and literary language took its toll on Classical Sasnkrit (the language of say Kalidasa). But Latin was spoken and used as a medium of communication, both in ancient Rome and in medieval Europe. I'd say that Sanskrit served a similar purpose in Hindu India.
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