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ragnarok62 t1_j0s1qpz wrote

If there are 25,000 contemporary speakers, why would they not be able to make sense of the underlying algorithm? Are modern Sanskrit and ancient Sanskrit that much different?

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Yrcrazypa t1_j0sjl5k wrote

Try to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. That's nowhere near as far back as Old English and it's already really difficult for most speakers of English, if not outright impossible for another huge portion.

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Duggy1138 t1_j0sl9ab wrote

People have enough trouble with Shakespeare and that's early Modern English.

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willun t1_j0sn8di wrote

What? Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

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SurferJase t1_j0sus4k wrote

I do bite my thumb, sir.

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MasterDooman t1_j0th47e wrote

Try reading it with a Scottish accent. It becomes remarkably easy to understand then.

If you're reading it with a North American accent, that's where it's difficult.

Was a trick I learned in university when dealing with Canterbury tales/beowulf/ other Middle English texts.

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doyouevensunbro t1_j0ti258 wrote

Like anyone could decipher the modern Scottish accent

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curtyshoo t1_j0tppjo wrote

The first time I traveled to Europe I found myself sitting in a moving train with two Scots.

I couldn't understand a word they said.

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temalyen t1_j0vsdal wrote

Now I want to hear Groundskeeper Willie read it.

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kindred_asura t1_j0tqkmo wrote

Can you work backwards in works like go from Milton and Shakespeare (modern english let's say) to Chaucer (middle english) to Beowulf (old english) and learn the language like that?

I read Paradise Lost and even that was hard for me since English is my 2nd language.

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Adlach t1_j0ujus5 wrote

I think a determined reader could get as far as Middle English with that approach but Beowulf, being in Old English, is probably unreadable without academic study of the language. Let me quote the first few sentences to you:

> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,

> þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

> hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

> Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

> monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,

> egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð

> feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,

> weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,

> oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra

> ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

> gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.

I did my undergrad in linguistics and personally the only sentence I can read is the last one, which literally translates to "That was [a] good king."

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Volgin t1_j0vj670 wrote

Are there other texts that are contemporary to Beowulf but easier to read? I tried something similar in french a few months back and could easily read early 13th century letters and such but if the text was lyrical or some sort of poetry it was often way harder to read since it was written in an classical/older style that borrowed heavily from Latin.

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Adlach t1_j0vr7ar wrote

Not to my knowledge. English went through some huge shifts in pronunciation and orthography since the Old English period. I actually feel that using English as context for this article is misleading because of that—most other languages haven't undergone such dramatic transformations.

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temalyen t1_j0wf4ii wrote

I had an English teacher in High School who, when we were reading Canterbury Tales, would basically call us lazy if we said we couldn't understand what the heck it was saying. She said a bunch of times, "This isn't any harder than anything else written in english, you're just being lazy. If you actually concentrated, you'd have no problems at all reading it."

It always pissed me off because that is obviously not true, but she'd shut down any sort of dissent and insist we're making up a problem that doesn't exist. Annoying. To this day, I still don't understand why she'd take an attitude like that when it's very obviously wrong.

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jimthesquirrelking t1_j0s46sq wrote

Modern and old English are far apart enough to be quite difficult to translate fully, I imagine a language with deeper roots even more so

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ragnarok62 t1_j0s5m4s wrote

The article should have made this more clear. To state that people speak Sanskrit today makes everything else odd.

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Tony2Punch t1_j0sgovt wrote

There are people that speak the Vedic Sanskrit, it is extremely useful in figuring out the Proto-Indo-European Language. That is the old Sanskrit.

Fun fact, a Sanskrit Scholar would have been able to talk to a Lithuanian peasant back in ye olde’ time because their languages were similar enough.

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_rgk t1_j0snxzd wrote

When?

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mylittlekarmamonster t1_j0srq8p wrote

> I’ll let you be the judge of that. Here are two sentences, one in sanskrit, one in lithuanian: Sanskrit: Kas tvam asi? Asmi svapnas tava tamase nakte. Agniṃ dadau te śradi tada viśpatir devas tvam asi. Lithuanian: Kas tu esi? Esmi sapnas tavo tamsioje naktyje. Ugnį daviau tau širdy, tada viešpatis dievas tu esi. English: Who are you? A dream in your dark night. I gave you the fire in your heart, so you are god our lord. Sanskrit: Kas tava sūnus? Lithuanian: Kas tavo sūnus? English: Who is your son?

Just some words. Lithuanian on the left, Sanskrit center, English on the right: DIEVAS-DEVAS-GOD; BŪTIS-BHUTIS-EXISTENCE; VIEŠPATS-VISPATI-Another expression for God (more or less equivalent to the christian expression: “our lord”); RASA-RASA-DEW; MEDUS-MADHUS-HONEY; JAVAS-YAVAS-CEREAL; UGNIS - AGNIS-FIRE; VĖJAS-VAJUS-WIND; AKMUO-AKMAN-STONE/ROCK; BANGA- BHANGA-WAVE; VYRAS-VIRAS-MAN; SŪNUS-SUNUS-SON; SENAS-SANAS-OLD; ESU-ASMI-I’M... Of course, they are still different languages, but it’s no wonder many scholars that want to study Sanskrit do study Lithuanian first.

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notmyrealnameatleast t1_j0sv6gf wrote

Wow that's so interesting, I had no idea they were so similar and yet so far apart geographically.

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Russki_Wumao t1_j0tvyze wrote

I speak Latvian and I understood all but three words you listed. This is neat as fuck. The Sanskrit sentence reads more like Latgalian dialect. Probably because the region borders with Lithuania.

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dilsiam t1_j0u0f8a wrote

This is beautiful and very interesting, thank you for sharing

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Modern_rocko t1_j0sri2q wrote

Ye Olde’ Time, he just said

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MarsRocks97 t1_j0t5mzi wrote

On a tangent, but I read somewhere that “Ye” is not pronounced like in yet or yeet. The archaic letter Y was just commonly used to denote a “th” sound.

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nolo_me t1_j0t7t3r wrote

The letter þ was called "thorn", it fell out of use with the rise of the printing press. In blackletter type "Y" was often substituted.

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cdncbn t1_j0thxzd wrote

Even more tangential, but I do enjoy saying 'th' to myself whenever I see Ye in the news.

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GoAheadMakeMySplay t1_j0t7vlg wrote

Yeah, right here. As a native anglophone, I struggled with Middle English (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales) and Old English was undecipherable (Beowulf) to me

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________________0 t1_j0tasga wrote

And Chaucer is late middle-English which is much easier to understand than even just early middle-English. I can read Chaucer pretty reliably now but fuck if I can read Layamon's Brut yet.

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GoAheadMakeMySplay t1_j0tdmhn wrote

*Whan that Aprile, with his showeres soote, and the raines hath perced to the roote... ________________0 hath this thy comme, in pilrammage for soote"

(yes, I'm drunk right now, so please accept this as an approximation)

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sycamotree t1_j0tw149 wrote

Is "soote" soot? Otherwise it didn't seem that tough. But I also obviously could just be wrong in understanding so there's that lol.

Granted I also don't understand what soot would even mean in this context unless it's a poem about volcanoes or something lol

Edit: I looked it up.. it means sweet? Guess I had no idea what I was talking about anyway

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Drachefly t1_j0unp12 wrote

properly,

> Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
> The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

Means, "when the (sweet) rain of April has thoroughly wetted the ground after the drought of March…"

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sycamotree t1_j0x1nvp wrote

I read this as, "When April with its showers sweet, the drought of March has pierced to the roots."

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Drachefly t1_j0x8tlz wrote

I rearranged to make the grammar clearer. Like, what's doing the piercing in that sentence? It's April, not the drought of March.

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sycamotree t1_j0x8ywu wrote

Man I thought it was a poem I didn't think about it making sense lol I'm just saying how I read it in a literal sense. I didn't interpret it as "first, then"

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doegred t1_j0u1w0u wrote

TBF Beowulf is probably not the best example since it's poetry. Old English is still obviously its own language but if you've got a few basic notions of phonology and/or some knowledge of another Germanic language you'll probably be able to decipher a bit of OE prose. Poetry on the other hand will still be hard as fuck.

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ateSomeBo t1_j0tcbjr wrote

Because, they are mostly modern day priests and their families living in India, who learned them as religious scripts passed on through generations. Lot of intricacies are lost through this method, but it's the only way the language has survived as a spoken language. Almost none of those 25000 speakers really speak or use sanskit for their day to day activity, rather they use it as a secondary language mainly to perform religious rituals and prayers.

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ragnarok62 t1_j0u55mx wrote

That’s good to know. Thank you for doing the work the article author should have done.

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DeTrotseTuinkabouter t1_j0ufx43 wrote

To add to what others have said: it gets crazy. What is commonly taught as the oldest Dutch sentence (it isn't) is from c. 1100. One theory though is that it is perhaps a certain west Flemmish dialect of English.

Can't tell you the specifics but basically it gets fucky wucky that far back.

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