Learning Sanskrit...

[AgentPete]

I’m starting a short Sanskrit course at SOAS this Autumn, with some trepidation. I like to push myself to learn new stuff, and have recently finished an anatomy course, which was fascinating.

Now, however, I’m starting to wonder whether I might not have bitten off more than I can chew. The Devanagari script looks pretty terrifying.

If anyone can help / advise / point in right direction, it would be much appreciated...

 

[Marc Joan]

I’m starting a short Sanskrit course at SOAS this Autumn, with some trepidation. I like to push myself to learn new stuff, and have recently finished an anatomy course, which was fascinating.

Now, however, I’m starting to wonder whether I might not have bitten off more than I can chew. The Devanagari script looks pretty terrifying.

If anyone can help / advise / point in right direction, it would be much appreciated...

Hi Pete
I learnt Hindi when I was a kid, which I think uses a very similar script. My recollection is that if you have a retentive memory, you will have no problem absorbing the script. I found that it helped to 'see' certain English letters buried in their corresponding glyphs - e.g. you can just about make out a cursive 'K' in the Hindi symbol corresponding to that phoneme.
Marc Joan

 

[AgentPete]

Yes, it’s the same script, Devanagari. Which of course is itself a Sanskrit word.

I’m seeing those similarities you mention, but not sure it’s a good idea to do so!

First time I’ve strayed beyond the Roman alphabet, feeling very insecure about it!

 

[flootzavut]

No idea how much this will help, but I studied Russian at university and have dabbled in Koine Greek, Arabic and Hebrew, so I will share my experiences!

First things first: don't be scared of the script. It may be too late since I imagine you started already, but it bears repeating. These things take time to get used to, but alternate alphabets are not as difficult as they often appear as first. (I've often had to correct people and tell them that Cyrillic is by far and away the easiest thing about Russian )

As far as I know Devanagari is a proper alphabet that represents the sounds of the languages the same way the Roman alphabet represents the sounds of many European languages. This might sound obvious, but it isn't always the case - with Hebrew, you have to know a certain amount of the language to be able to make intelligent guesses of the vowels, which in everyday life are not usually included in the writing. The fact that the Devanagari script will actually tell you how to say a word is a bonus, believe me

Reading and writing it: the obvious, practise a lot. The more practice, the more fluent and comfortable it will become.

When I was just starting to learn Cyrillic, the examples in the books were often brand names that had been rendered in such a way that the brand was familiar even though the letters were not, or words that had been adopted into Russian without being modified, so once one had figured out that it sounded like "corn flakes" or "hamburger", meaning became obvious. The next step also seemed obvious: figuring out how to write my own name and others' names in the script, even writing English sentences in Cyrillic, copying out Russian dialogue from our textbooks, etc.

It's also helpful to learn to recognise a few common and useful words - if you can spot the "ands" and "buts" in the text, it gives you something to hold on to, and it's iust so nice to spot something and realise you do know a little, even if at first it is only a little.

I do personally think that getting comfortable with writing it is really important. Obviously from the standpoint of writing anything in a given language, but also I think it is a really good way of getting the script into your head. Jot notes to yourself in it, challenge yourself to find really short pieces of the script (say, Hindi advertisements) and work out what the letters are and how you'd say it, even if you don't know what the words actually mean.

Just IMO, there's a confidence factor with being able to decipher and reproduce an alphabet that at first just looked like pretty squiggles that is a real boost for one's belief that the task is actually doable. I suppose it's a little like feeling you've learned a new code or secret, and it may seem silly but it really does feel good to look at what was once a bunch of curls and wibbles and be able to see sounds and words in there. With a script that seems so foreign, all progress and all achievements are worth celebrating and giving yourself a pat on the back over, even if it's just seeing Coca Cola in the script and being able to sound out those words.

I have a feeling I'm probably forgetting some really obvious tricks, if I think of anything else handy then I'll let you know. I hope it goes/is going really well and you're enjoying it and finding it less intimidating than at first. Devanagari is on my list of "scripts I must learn", as a language/alphabet enthusiast, I am quite jealous! Good luck and have fun

 

[AgentPete]

I’m not sure if we’ll have to learn Devanagari. Since Sanskrit was/is an exclusively oral language, you could argue that any transliteration would serve just as well. However, I fear I will have to master those squiggly characters...

Sanskrit/Devanagari is (allegedly!) accessible inasmuch as it’s one character for one syllable. No weird rules or exceptions as per English (how does anyone ever learn that?).

Everything I’ve casually learned about Sanskrit over the past couple of years has entranced me, so even if (when!) it becomes hideous, I think I’ll still be keen...

It starts next week...

 

[Marc Joan]

I seem to remember there are some idiosyncracies, eg the i vowel is written in a different position according to whether it is short or long; and some consonants elide into each other - but maybe those are modern Hindi conventions, I don't know.

 

[flootzavut]

I do think that with languages in particular, having a passion for and excitement about the language is a huge, huge advantage

I asked a friend of mine who speaks Hindi if she had any tips on Devanagari:

She said it's totally phonetic, so once you know the letters you should be able to pronounce any word written in the script, and to learn the consonants first. In Hindi at least (I don't know if this is also applicable to Sanskrit, though it does seem likely), vowels appear differently if they're at the beginning of a word versus if they're within a word. Her specific example was this:

"A long "a" as in "ahh" looks like this... आ ... But if that long "a" occurs within a word (think "pollen") the letter would be written like ... ा "

She also said that she practised by writing English words in the script!

Long and short vowels are different letters and written accordingly, which I think once you've got your head round it is almost certainly an advantage: when you see an a in English it could be said several different ways. I'm forever grateful that I'm a native speaker, to be honest...

One of the things I read about it described it as (if I remembered right) an alphasyllabary, which I think means that it's written in chunks of consonant/vowel (a bit like Japanese katakana and hiragana) but are actually made up of something we'd recognise as an alphabet, instead of random and apparently unrelated squiggles like hiragana are.

(Also some of the letter shapes are related to how the letter is formed with the mouth and tongue, somehow (I may not have 100% understood that), like Korean Hangul, which is pretty cool. Or at least for this language geek that's cool )

It definitely sounds like it's a lot more logical and consistent than many writing systems out there, it'd probably take a while to get a handle on but actually makes a lot of sense. I think it's probably a lot more accessible than a straight syllabary like the Japanese scripts, or with abjads like Hebrew or Arabic where they leave out most of the vowels, so yeah... don't be intimidated by it is the take away here I think

Hope you'll keep us updated how you're getting on once you get going! I am such a language nerd, I get as excited about other people learning languages as about me learning languages

 

[AgentPete]

Thanks so much... yes, will keep you updated. First class is this Thursday, then I’m away for a mini break (won’t be posting here until the following Tuesday, folks...)