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Re: Old Languages

From:Boudewijn Rempt <boud@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 10, 2001, 5:21
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