Re: Old Languages

On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, Amber Adams wrote:

> I know that's not the case for Modern Hindi, it uses spaces between words.
>
That's also true for Nepali, which uses a lot of virams (or was it
halants) to remove the inherent silent a at the end of words.

> But that's really interesting for Sanskrit... that system would work ok
> for reading out loud, but what about silently?  Or was it like a lot of
> other old written languages, where people just didn't read silently...?
>
Yes, writing was completely ancillary. My teacher told me he still met
pandits who could recite large parts of Sanskrit works - the vedas and
the Mahabharata.


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org