Re: NATLANG/Learning : Sanskrit

Jean-François Colson wrote:


> The Sanskrit course is at http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/tutor.html.
>
>
>>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.
>
> ... and that most of them are made using the half forms of the consonants.
Ok.


>>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.
>
> Or the 1945 Japanese Jouyou kanji + some thousands you need if you want to
> read some technical texts.
>
> But are you sure that the ideographs are really iconic in the present time.
> Those characters evolved to such a point it's difficult to make the link
> between the character shape and its meanings, except perhaps if you have
> studied their etimology. ;-)
Right. That's why I said 'iconic' not 'pictoral'. Each radical and hanzi element
has its own 'aura' of meanings, a bit like ordinary words in a language: I find
the hanzi element to meaning relationship 'feels' like the sound-complex to
meaning relationship in English. Mysterious, subterranian, but with many
discernable patterns. Perhaps "symbolic" would have been a better choice of word.

s.

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