Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

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Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby David1917 » Mon Nov 06, 2017 3:14 am

Hi all

A major long-term goal of mine is to be able to read Sanskrit. I know about the good Sanskrit resources and everything, I just wonder if it might be worth my while to spend a short time going through an introductory Hindi course to get a better baseline feel for the reading/sounds via a related living language. Any tips/insight appreciated.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby Theodisce » Mon Nov 06, 2017 5:49 am

I've never attempted to learn an Indo-Aryan language, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe learning Hindi in order to learn Sanskrit would be equivalent of learning Spanish in order to learn Latin.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby nooj » Mon Nov 06, 2017 6:33 am

No need to learn Hindi in order to learn Sanskrit, in fact it might just end up confusing you.

You don't even need to learn the Devanagari before you begin, you'll learn it as you learn Sanskrit, with different sound values to that of Hindi or other languages that use the writing system.

If you want to learn Sanskrit, learn Sanskrit. It is extremely different from Hindi, in the same way that Latin is incomprehensible for a speaker of the Romance languages.

For what it's worth, in my Sanskrit class, a lot of the students were heritage speakers or speakers of Hindi, but those of us who didn't know how to read or write Devanagari caught up with them in a matter of weeks, and they were just as hopelessly confused as everyone else when it came to cases.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby aravinda » Mon Nov 06, 2017 6:40 am

Before answering your question, I will give a brief introduction of myself so that you can see my answer in the proper perspective. I studied Sanskrit during three or four short periods of my life but I have not studied it recently. I would consider myself an advanced beginner. I have only dabbled with Hindi (a long time after Sanskrit). My native language is related to Sanskrit (and Hindi) which makes both these languages relatively easier for me.
Assuming you have no intrinsic interest in Hindi (or any other related language for that matter), the short answer is "no": By studying Hindi you will only be doing some extra work and be postponing actual Sanskrit study.
Hindi uses the same script with some modifications (additions), the sound system is largely similar but not identical and the vocabulary is largely derived from Sanskrit. A little knowledge of Hindi will surely make Sanskrit look familiar and as a result, a bit easier. But in my opinion, the same result could be achieved with less time by directly starting with Sanskrit. And you don't need to make any adjustments (from Hindi to Sanskrit) which involve some effort when both languages are new and closely related. A related question (you didn't ask) is about using Hindi based material for Sanskrit. Again, no. As far as I can tell, they are almost always aimed at people who speak a related (or a contact) language natively.
Here's the counter-argument. From the very little Hindi I know, it is considerably easier than Sanskrit (at least at the beginning). Less morphology and sandhi, easier vocabulary. Then there are native speakers to practice and a lot of modern native content in the form of Bollywood movies, songs etc.
P.S. I see Theodisce and nooj have already replied while I was typing my answer.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby tarvos » Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:04 am

Here's the thing about related languages. If you happen to know them already, good on you! Makes stuff a lot easier. If not, don't bother - it's Sanskrit you need to learn, not Hindi, and it takes more time to learn two languages than one.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby Steve » Mon Nov 06, 2017 2:35 pm

FWIW, Here's a brief summary of my experience learning to read ancient Greek. Depending on the dialect and genre of the text I'm looking at, there are times I can read comfortably with a good degree of understanding and other times I'm at a loss to understand much. I can pick up and comfortably read many narratives in simpler Hellenistic Greek (which is the later Greek that characterized the language used throughout the Greek empire mostly by people for whom Greek was a second language). Philosophical texts in the older classic Greek still at times leaving me feeling like it's Greek to me.

I first started ancient Greek some 30 years ago. I used the standard approach of rote memorization of vocabulary lists and paradigm tables and then parsing away at a few simple texts. In the first couple of years, I felt like I was making good progress. I then hit a plateau, lost motivation, got busy with other things in life, and stopped. I restarted a few years later, reviewed/re-memorized the vocabulary lists and paradigm tables (which came back quickly to me) and hammered away at a few simple texts. Burned out again, lost interest. Picked it up again and did the same thing. Repeated that same cycle a number of times. Fast forward 20 some years. Countless hours wasted with really no progress and I thought about permanently giving up on it.

I ran across the HTLAL site and had the epiphany that learning ancient Greek was about acquiring *actual* reading skills, not spending my time memorizing descriptions and tables *about* Greek. I also had never realized the importance of *listening* to what I was reading. I think it was Alexander Arguelles who made a comment about the importance of letting a language have a "voice in your head" or something like that when responding to someone interested in learning Latin. Following that advice, I picked up a recording (using a Modern Greek pronunciation) of a Greek text along with a free interlinear version of that text and just started listening and following along. Instead of spending most of my time memorizing tables, I spend most of my time following along and listening (and repeating this on the same text many times). Within a month, I had made more progress in learning to read Greek than I had in the previous decades. The groundwork I had laid learning the general principles of Greek grammar was useful. However, I found that the listening and reading quickly helped me to start internalizing the language. Instead of "reading" Greek being a more mathematical type of exercise where I was painstakingly looking up and plugging in unknowns to piece together the meaning, reading Greek became something closer to real reading. I could look at a text and just start processing it without resorting to thinking about the inflection of every single word.

About 5 to 6 years of having done much extensive and intensive reading (and trying to find a good balance between them to both make progress and to simply enjoy it and keep up my motivation), I am satisfied with my progress, enjoy reading Greek, and have made reading various things in Greek something close to a daily part of my life.

I'd strongly recommend adding an audio component as well as using either an interlinear (if available) or some type of parallel texts. I'm guessing that there might be some modern narrations (in some pronunciation be it a modern related language or some reconstructed ancient pronunciation) of the Sanskrit texts you are interested in to listen to as well.

If I were to go back and start ancient Greek from scratch. I'd balance my time between the standard learning of grammar and actually listening and reading (or, more accurately, at first following along as best I could with interlinears or parallel texts). I would spend little effort trying to memorize grammar and paradigm tables. I'd simply familiarize myself with the contents and then use them as necessary to answer questions that arise as I am reading. I would lean heavily on the listening and reading as my main means of internalizing and remembering the language rather than relying on the grammar tables and vocabulary lists. Knowing what I do now, I'd probably spent about 3/4 of my time working on actual reading and listening skills and the remainder studying grammar books, tables, etc.

I think that the most important thing is setting up a balance between making actual progress and having enough satisfaction with what you are doing to make this something you want to come back to day after day.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby David1917 » Mon Nov 06, 2017 8:47 pm

Thanks for the help everyone.

I guess like the Greek post, I wonder about having a "voice" to go along with the readings, and I think it makes more sense to have like a Hindi voice than whatever sounds my brain comes up with. Apart from that I wouldn't *mind* knowing Hindi - but it doesn't seem very necessary since it seems to me that everyone in India speaks English rather well and I need to curtail the number of languages I want to learn. I do enjoy Bollywood quite a bit, but not necessarily to the extent that I need to understand it without subs.

What about the inverse - if I start on Sanskrit now, and then one day decide I want to go to India, would learning some basics in a modern language like Hindi then become easier, especially just for some basic stuff before resorting to English? Many people that studied Latin in school end up finding Spanish/Italian really easy to learn later.

I guess my overall holdup is learning my first ancient language - I feel as though I need to get something "speakable" out of the process!
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby nooj » Mon Nov 06, 2017 11:19 pm

What about the inverse - if I start on Sanskrit now, and then one day decide I want to go to India, would learning some basics in a modern language like Hindi then become easier, especially just for some basic stuff before resorting to English? Many people that studied Latin in school end up finding Spanish/Italian really easy to learn later.


More than anything, knowing any other language will help you when it comes to learning another language, because learning any foreign language comes with a whole metalanguage to describe what you're doing. I didn't know what the terminology of subject, object, indirect object etc meant before I learned Latin/Classical Greek, and that really helped me when I was learning the grammar of French or Spanish. But I'm sure you can get the same benefit from learning any other language.

By the way, my Sanskrit professor learned Hindi/Urdu afterwards, but it was by no means a piece of cake according to her because they're just different languages. If you're going to go into classical Indian literature though, Sanskrit is just the start. First, you gotta learn Vedic Sanskrit (to me, it was like transitioning from Classical Greek to Homeric but harder), then the other great classical languages: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada etc. Some of the best Indian literature was composed in these languages.
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby aravinda » Tue Nov 07, 2017 1:51 am

Only now I realized that it was your first post here. Sorry about that. स्वागतम् Welcome to the Forum!

“Having a voice” / audio support
Considering your language background you would need some recordings (or better, a teacher) at least until you “master” the sounds of Sanskrit. But you don’t need to learn Hindi for the sake of “having a voice”. You can find enough Sanskrit recordings out there. If you need any help in this regard please let me know.

(Personally, I never needed audio to learn Sanskrit sounds because I was already familiar with them through my native language. Present day Sinhala speakers don’t maintain some sound distinctions of Sanskrit but I think most educated Sinhala people could recognise and even produce most of these distinct sounds correctly with very little effort. Later, when I studied Latin, I didn’t rely much on audio, though it was fun to listen to good recordings.)

I agree with you and Steve that listening can help with learning, especially if you enjoy listening. Apart from that, after “mastering “ the sounds of a “dead” language, I don’t think it is essential to have audio. I prefer working without audio. On a side note, some recordings (like Assimil Latin) are not exactly faithful to the restituted pronunciation (for example, the distinction between short and long vowels is not maintained).

Analogy with Latin and Romance languages
Coming to “dead” languages, the analogy with Latin and Romance languages is broadly correct but like all analogies, there are some limitations. First, when we compare Latin and Sanskrit, we are talking about different degrees of “dead”. I am no expert on any of these things, so please correct me if I am wrong. Sanskrit was never “dead’ in the sense of Latin being “dead”. Second, even today Sanskrit has a much stronger presence in the day to day life of Hindi speaking people than Latin in Romance-speaking people. Third, Sanskrit pronunciation was not really restituted, it has been an unbroken oral tradition. Maybe the sounds changed a bit over time, I don’t know. If I am not mistaken, Sanskrit was never a true native language of a people. Sanskrit has always been a formal and literary language that was “well-constructed” and codified by the ancient grammarians. People spoke Prakrits in their day to day life. (Is it the same with Latin and Vulgar Latin?).

From Sanskrit to Hindi (or other related languages)
It wouldn’t be essentially different to the first scenario. As nooj already pointed out, you still have to learn two different languages. But some Sanskrit knowledge will be useful in learning even an unrelated language from the region because all these languages were heavily influenced by Sanskrit from the arrangement of the sounds/letters, through grammar, vocabulary to literary tradition.
Last edited by aravinda on Tue Nov 07, 2017 4:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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David1917
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Re: Hindi necessary for Sanskrit?

Postby David1917 » Tue Nov 07, 2017 2:52 am

Thank you for the highly detailed post. It sounds like I will dive on into Sanskrit, probably in December once this semester ends. My interest lies mostly with the Bhagavad Gita - which it looks like the Egnes book uses excerpts from.

As far as a modern language to eventually learn, I was thinking Hindi because it has the most resources and is the official language, though I am aware of the situation especially in the south regarding the use of Hindi. So instead I will focus on the more important aspect of reading right now, and if I end up going to India and finding an area that really "speaks" to me (sorry for the pun), I could then theoretically focus on that language. Thanks again everyone!
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