Re: NATLANG/Learning : Sanskrit

Nikhil Sinha wrote:
>>"Stephen Mulraney" <ataltanie@...> likis:
>>Interesting nonetheless.
>>It's rather... involved, is it not? the script, that it. After working though
>>all the vowels and consonant-series, you're told that there are a few thousand
>
>>ligatures that are used too. If that many are needed, I'd judge the memory
>>load of this script to be greater than the famed "5000 hanzi" needed for
>>reading some level of Chinese. At least the hanzi are iconic.


> There are two forms of ligatures, early and modern. Early form is used by
> old styled people, who are few in number. People today use the newer
> version. It is greatly simplified. Earlier each and every possible consonant
> combination was written with a different ligature. So ligatures like kkh,
> ksh, kr, etc. would have different form of 'k'. But it the newer form, all
> the ligatures involving 'k' (or any other letter) would have the same form
> in every combination; and this form is different from the 'k' when it is not
> combined with other consonants.
>
> So, now every consonant has two forms; yes only two forms instead of
> hundreds earlier. English-speaking people should be used to these, as there
> are two forms of Roman letters, upper case and lower case.

Ah, very interesting. I'm suprised to see that my original reaction had a grain
of truth, i.e. that there used to be a distinct ligature for each consonant
group.


> For any help regarding Devanagari ask me.
>
> Nikhil
> (My mother tongue (Hindi) is written in Devanagari and I have also studied
> Sanskrit for three years.)
Thanks for the info!

s.
----
To be sure to be sure
Stephen Mulraney... ataltane at ataltane.net... ataltane.net

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