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Interesting. >In comparaison to other languages, Finnish is very regular. Sanskrit (another Indo-European language) is another language that is regular, or ma

by vram22 12y ago

Interesting. >In comparaison to other languages, Finnish is very regular. Sanskrit (another Indo-European language) is another language that is regular, or maybe I should say its grammar rules are fairly systematic. It's as though the language was designed by a mathematician or computer scientist - orthogonal, etc. - speaking loosely, of course - I'm not a linguist by any means. But I did study Sanskrit for some years in high school. Also: >really rich in derivations (you can create hundreds of words based on one root Similar to Sanskrit again. You can create words not only based on one root, but by combining various words, roots, stems, prefixes, suffixes, etc. Of course other languages may have this too. Another interesting thing I read about Sanskrit is that some of the verses in shlokas [1] have multiple layers of meaning, e.g. a superficial meaning and deeper meaning(s). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shloka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shloka

fernly 12y ago
"But I did study Sanskrit for some years in high school." Sheesh. 'round here a really first class high school is one that offers one language other than Spanish.
- vram22 12y ago
  Heh. Well, I don't think my school was exceptional in that way, though it was reasonably good. It's just that this was in India and Sanskrit and Hindi were two of the languages taught. Can't remember now whether it was an elective or not.
rspeer 12y ago
Sanskrit comes across as logical because it's almost always learned as a second language for scholarly purposes. It has a small number of native speakers, but when you learn Sanskrit you're probably not specifically learning to talk to them. A more obvious example of this is Latin, which sounds so scholarly because for centuries it was used only by scholars. If the toddlers of a nation were somehow taught to speak Latin for everyday purposes, the living language that resulted would give Latin teachers a heart attack.

by vram22 12y ago

fernly 12y ago

"But I did study Sanskrit for some years in high school." Sheesh. 'round here a really first class high school is one that offers one language other than Spanish.

vram22 12y ago
Heh. Well, I don't think my school was exceptional in that way, though it was reasonably good. It's just that this was in India and Sanskrit and Hindi were two of the languages taught. Can't remember now whether it was an elective or not.

rspeer 12y ago

Sanskrit comes across as logical because it's almost always learned as a second language for scholarly purposes. It has a small number of native speakers, but when you learn Sanskrit you're probably not specifically learning to talk to them. A more obvious example of this is Latin, which sounds so scholarly because for centuries it was used only by scholars. If the toddlers of a nation were somehow taught to speak Latin for everyday purposes, the living language that resulted would give Latin teachers a heart attack.