I am wondering if anybody here can read Sanskrit. I have looked at many different books and everything about it seems immensely difficult; even to the extent of making Greek look easy by comparison. Moreover, many Sanskrit adherents have an almost maniacal tendency to play down its difficulty: they seem to imply that to say that Sanskrit is difficult is almost to cast aspersions against it and those who are attempting to spread its use in India and abroad. Interestingly, every single author who has written a Sanskrit textbook is quick to mention Sanskrit’s great difficulty but that the learning of it will open up vistas well worth the effort.
On another topic, I read an article where the linguist who wrote it seemed to imply that it is absurd to ask about the difficulty of any given language as every person is unique, as is every language, and so the ability to learn a given language depends on ones gifts. One guy did write in to say that he found highly inflected languages to be a breeze.
It would seem fair to say that a language like Greek and Finnish that requires a great deal of memorization just to write a simple sentence, is more difficult than so-called isolating languages like English and Chinese which lack inflections and, except for having to memorize zillions of characters in the case of Chinese, the grammar is not very difficult, at least at first.
What say everybody?
I could once. Took three semesters of it in college. Is that close enough? It’s very hard going for me now.
I have looked at many different books and everything about it seems immensely difficult; even to the extent of making Greek look easy by comparison.
Yes.
When I first took Sanskrt the professor asked about people’s backgrounds. Much of the class was classics students of a philological bent. A month or so later, after we hit another noun declension, one of the classicists asked, “so, how many declensions are there.” The teaching assistand doing the session that days said, “you know, I’ve never stopped to count.” We never saw three of them again.
That said, the consonant stem declensions are trivial if you’ve memorized the sandhi rules.
Interestingly, every single author who has written a Sanskrit textbook is quick to mention Sanskrit’s great difficulty but that the learning of it will open up vistas well worth the effort.
Two words: erotic verse.
But also plays, (non-erotic) poetry, religion, epic (two HUGE ones), philosophy, astrology (um, not so much for me, please), grammar, more religious philosophy, fables, Hindu law, and the Vedas, which are to Sanskrit what Homer is to Greek - archaic and quirky.
There are some who insist that somehow Sanskrit would be a perfect language for computers because it’s so logical! This is nonsense. It’s no more logical than any other language.
On another topic, I read an article where the linguist who wrote it seemed to imply that it is absurd to ask about the difficulty of any given language as every person is unique, as is every language, and so the ability to learn a given language depends on ones gifts.
A year ago I would have agreed with this. No more. The true test of a language’s difficulty is how long it takes the average monolingual native speaker to use correct grammar most of the time (obviously a full vocabulary and style comes later). My little nephew, 6 or 7 now, when he speaks up enough to be heard, appears to use correct English grammar most of the time. It takes a Cree speaker into the early teens before this is possible.
Now, this doesn’t mean that some people are going to find language learning easier than others. But if you take two people of comparable language skills, they’re both going to learn, say, Dutch, more easily than Cree or Fula.
I think part of the problem here is this hidden notion that “harder” equals “better.” Obviously all living languages are capable of expressing whatever humans speaking other lanugages can express (some with more words, some with fewer).
It would seem fair to say that a language like Greek and Finnish that requires a great deal of memorization just to write a simple sentence, is more difficult than so-called isolating languages like English and Chinese which lack inflections and, except for having to memorize zillions of characters in the case of Chinese, the grammar is not very difficult, at least at first.
Well, Chinese is a classifier language, which requires more memorizing. And the aspect stuff! Oy! (And only about 4000 characters are necessary to read non-specialized Chinese at the college level.) So while I’m not sure Chinese is as much easier than Finnish as you might think, it probably is easier. And all of them are easier than some of the Bantu languages which have not 2, not 3, but between 8 and 30 grammatical genders with mind-boggling agreement rules. Swahili, which started its life as a sort of Bantu creole, is by far the easiest member of the family.
Nope, I can’t read it. I don’t even know how to sound out the writings. It’s alphabet is read in “configuration” and it will appear wonky to someone who is used to a sequential alphabet. I always liked this quote from this book called “The Loom of Language.”
“The complete Sanskrit verb finite, that is the verb without its infinitives, participles, and verbal adjectives plus their flexions, has 743 different forms, as against the 268 of Greek.”
One guy did write in to say that he found highly inflected languages to be a breeze.
I had an interesting talk with this guy from Lithuania. I found it very fascinating that he was complaining that English doesn’t have any “endings.” I’ve just always assumed a language would be easier if it didn’t have any endings what so ever regardless of someone’s language background. I mean that’s basically the premise of Esperanto even though it does have a few endings. So I guess no matter how “easy” a language is, your native language plays a bigger factor than I thought.
So anyway, are you planning to learn Sanskrit?
not 2, not 3, but between 8 and 30 grammatical genders
Now this is puzzling, I can only imagine 3 or 4 types of genders. Masculine, Feminine, neuter, --and perhaps hermaphrodite …?? I think I’m taking the concept of grammatical gender too literally. 
Well, they usually get called classes these days, but they act much like gender does in the IE languages. Kiswahili Noun Classes.
Oh, drat. I exaggerated the number of classes. I guess 22 is tops according to one scholar.
Ah ok, I was hoping that there was a more shocking explanation. 
Thanks for the link.
Thanks, Annis, for your quite interesting and helpful comments on all aspects of my letter. When you asked if your three semesters of Sanskrit were enough to comment on this language (and, believe me, in my view three semesters of Sanskrit is quite impressive), it put me in mind of a question I have thought about for quite some time.
What counts as a reading knowledge of a language?
When can I look another person in the eye and say with complete confidence that I can read a language?
Should my own subjective beliefs be enough to announce my proficiency
in a given tongue, or should my eventual goal be to take a standardized
test that will prove my attainments if only to myself?
Thanks again for your previous response and I ask all and sundry to answer this question as well.
Big John 
Are there any among you who do not only have a reading knowledge of Greek but who could have a simple conversation in Greek.
Eg. if I were to ask (in English 
) : “How many children do you have? Are they boys or girl?” Could you answer in Greek?
μία, μία μοί ἐστι.
<<<<<.Nope, I can’t read it. I don’t even know how to sound out the writings. It’s alphabet is read in “configuration” and it will appear wonky to someone who is used to a sequential alphabet. I always liked this quote from this book called “The Loom of Language.” >>>>>
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I love his notion of learning a lot of languages at once, and I really love the extensive vocabularies in the romance and scandanavian languages. To think that
an author could be so erudite. Wow!
<<<<<<<So anyway, are you planning to learn Sanskrit?>>>>>>
I have looked at a great many grammars and I would love to learn this tongue. There are also tapes by a guy named Vyas Huston which are said to help tremendously in the learning of the script. Sanskrit is a language which stretches so far into the dimness of time that, were I able to read it, I would almost certainly feel as though I were communing with the ancients.
For me this means I can pick up a text in the given language and can read it at a reasonable pace without having to pick up a dictionary constantly. After all, I still have to do this with English from time to time.
Should my own subjective beliefs be enough to announce my proficiency in a given tongue, or should my eventual goal be to take a standardized test that will prove my attainments if only to myself?
My personal measure is the annoyance test. I do still absolutely need a dictionary at hand when reading Homer. However, these days I can regularly hit 3-5 line runs where everything is clear and it’s a bad day when I have to look up more than one word in any random hexameter. It’s still work, but not the burden it once was. I’m not ready to claim proficiency, that’ll come in time, but for those of us learning on our own, I think the annoyance test is the best test.
Actually there are Heteroclitic nouns in Greek…i.e. nouns that DO change gender, sounds embarassing to me 
It would take me a bit to think about it, but I could answer you at a fairly slow pace, the hard thing for me would be telling a narrative with all the finite verbs and subordinant partacipial clauses.
This is how I do it also Annis…I’ve (finally) gotten where I can read 3-6 verses in the GNT (in most places) without having to really stop and open my Lexicon (more correctly my Zerwick)…that being said, don’t ask me to translate Hebrews on the fly…the Gospels (even Luke) yes, but heavy theology has a very specialized vocab that I just don’t know quite enough of yet.
Annis wrote:<<<< For me this means I can pick up a text in the given language and can read it at a reasonable pace without having to pick up a dictionary constantly. After all, I still have to do this with English from time to time.>>>>>>
There was this curator at the New England Museum of Art in the 40s who was said to know more than 20 languages perfectly, including Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. His last name was Coomaraswamy and he wrote dozens of books on a myriad of different topics(I love his work.).
Anyway when somebody asked him when he considered himself to know a language, his response mirrored yours exactly.
Annis also wrote:<<<<<
My personal measure is the annoyance test. I do still absolutely need a dictionary at hand when reading Homer. However, these days I can regularly hit 3-5 line runs where everything is clear and it’s a bad day when I have to look up more than one word in any random hexameter. It’s still work, but not the burden it once was. I’m not ready to claim proficiency, that’ll come in time, but for those of us learning on our own, I think the annoyance test is the best test.[/quote]>>>>>
Yeah, to be able to read a few lines at a time without having to stop every minute must feel wonderful. I have recently begun to read a story by Lu Xun in Chinese and, what with the constant looking up of characters, it is a fiendishly slow process. Still, it’s great to be back at this language again.
Thanks again for your input.