"Sanskrit students are like delicate houseplants"

[icarus]

My Sanskrit teacher is the sweetest person in the world. I told her how frustrated I was, emailed her my questions, and she found time in her busy schedule. As we left Sanskrit class she told me, "Based on your questions I think this is fairly simple."

In our meeting she said, "The problem's with the textbook."

She explains. The textbook uses some indeclinable examples in the section where it decribes the declinable relative/correlative, and declinable examples where it describes the indeclinable relative/correlative. Then the section on declinable relative/correlative begins in the middle of the discussion of the indeclinable, stops, goes back to a discussion of the indeclinables, then returns to the declinables.

She says, "I'd hate to have to write a textbook, you have to make choices," and this textbook is so much better for beginning student than many others, which were written in 1800s, "but this chapter is problematic. I mentioned this in class."

So I explained it to wildernessguru last night (I figure if I can explain it to the guy who has no interest in foreign language, then I've got it down).

There are relative and correlative clauses. Some don't point to a specific. 'When I went to the store, then I bought some milk.' The 'when' doesn't point to anything specific. That's an indeclinable -- "yadaa/tadaa." So that would be:

'When I went to the store, then I bought some milk.'
'Yadaa I went to the store, tadaa I bought some milk.'

Some relative/correlatives point to a specific person or a place etc. Those are declinable. Let's use Monte kitty as an example:

'Which cat snuggled under the covers?'
'The one, Monte, is the cat who snuggled under the covers.'

(Sorry about the awkward construction. I'm keeping it close to Sanskrit. In English we omit a lot of the correlatives.)

That's where I was confused. I didn't realize that there was a difference between the relative clause that points to a specific who, what, or which, and a relative clause that's just general, "when I went to the store..."

---

A little fun with declinable relative pronouns, if you're curious how this works.

If we're talking about Monte kitty, well, he's a he, right? So in Sanskrit we have a different word if the subject is a he or she. Since Monte is a boy it would be "yaha/saha":

'Which cat snuggled under the covers?'
'The one, Monte, is the cat who snuggled under the covers.'
'Saha, Monte-ha, is the cat yaha snuggled under the covers.'

(If Monte were female it would be "yaa/taa." You were going to ask, weren't you? ;)

Let's bear in mind that Sanskrit almost always has the relative clause first. So this would really be: "Yaha snuggled under the covers saha Monte is the cat."

In Sanskrit we have a different ending depending on whether Monte is the subject or if something is given to Monte (for example) and he's the object. The version above Monte is the subject, "yaha/saha." If Monte were the object, it would be "yam/tam."

Quick refresher on the endings I described weeks ago.
Monte the subject would be: Monte-ha
Monte the object would be: Monte-m

'Which cat did wildernessguru give a treat to?'
'wildernessguru gave a treat to the cat, who is Monte.'
'Yam wildernessguru-ha gave a treat to the cat-m, saha is Monte-ha.'

Wait, wait, you say. Shouldn't that be "yam/tam"? "Yam wildernessguru-ha gave a treat to the cat-m, tam is Monte-m"? Well, you have to splite the sentence into pieces.

'wildernessguru gave a treat to the cat...'

What's the subject of that sentence? The cat? Or wildernessguru? WG, of course. Cat is the object, right?

'...who/the one is Monte.'

What's the subject of that sentence? "The one/who" is the subject. Who does the "the one/who" refer to? Monte.

Now. The entire sentence, 'wildernessguru gave a treat to the cat, who is Monte' -- is it about wildernessguru, or is it about Monte? That's right. Even though Monte's the object of the first part of the sentence, he's the star. So:

'Yam [points to the star of the sentence and tells us the star is the object in this half] wildernessguru-ha gave a treat to the cat-m, saha [points to the star of the sentence and tells us the star is the subject in this half] is Monte-ha.'

Is that cluttered enough for you? :D

It's a two-step process to translate.

1 - As soon as you see the "ya/ta" (or "ya/sa") relative/correlative combo, you divvie up the sentence. The "ya" and the "ta" are going to refer to the same thing.

2 - Then you check out the ending to your "ya" and that'll point to the star in that clause, and check out the ending to your "ta" which'll point to the star in that clause. Monte could be mentioned in both, but, well, that would be a little redundant even for Sanskrit. He'll probably only be mentioned in the first part.

Sometimes he won't be mentioned at all. You'll just get the "ya" and "ta." What do you do then? Oh, that's our good friend context. You can probably figure it out from the earlier sentences.

Now I can't wait to do my homework.

Comments

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

You're using these Sanskrit posts like the explaining to WG, right. If you can explain it to the guy, who has no interest in foreign languages and all the poor confused fangirls on the internet, than you've understood it.

I have no idea, what you are talking about, but it sounds like fun. I wish my homework would move me to write posts like this.

Cheers.
Rike

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I did that good of a job actually. He seemed to get it, on the other hand, he could have been just born and nodding "yes, dear" so I wouldn't explain it any further. I've told him it's cool if he doesn't want to listen to me ramble about school, just nod and smile, because often I'm working it out in my own mind.

He preferred my history and anthropology classes. And science. Those he listened to in detail. :)

Icarus

Wow, my typos are getting worse.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That should read "he could have been just bored."

[winstonmom.livejournal.com]

That sounds like Sanskrit to me :o)

Kisses

First quarter Sanskrit in a nutshell.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

(Sorry, messed up the html on the other one.)

Yeah, I re-read it and even I get confused. It's later-in-the-quarter stuff so I've stuffed too much information in from earlier to explain it.

1 - First we learned the alphabet.

2 - Then we learned about how weird the spelling gets.

Sanskrit copies the sound so that, well, you know how in English "what did" comes out sounding like "whad did"? In Sanskrit you actually change the spelling to "whad did." The rules are very complicated and I still look them up on a chart.

3 - Then we learned verb endings. In English we have:

Singular -
I am
you are
he/she/it is

Plural -
we are
you are
they are

In Sanskrit you have an extra set of plurals called the "dual" and you tack on a verb ending for each of these:

Singular -
I am-mi
you are-si
he/she/it is-ti

Dual -
we both are-va-ha
you both are-thaha
those two are-taha

Plural -
we are-ma-ha
you are-tha
they are-anti

Then there's another set of endings for verbs conjugated differently. We learned those too, but I won't torture you. :) You just have to remember which verbs get which endings. "To be" like in every language is totally irregular and you have to just memorize it.

We haven't gotten into tenses yet.

4 - Then we covered how in Sanskrit, like German, French, and a lot of languages, nouns have a gender (masculine, feminine, neuter). Then in Sanskrit, like Latin and Greek, nouns get an ending tacked on depending on how it's used in a sentence:

Winstonmom-ha, if you're the subject of the sentence.
Winstonmon-am, if you're the object of the sentence.
Winstonmom-ya, if you're the instrument -- like going with you.
Etc., Etc...

Winstonmom-ha reads fanfiction.
We wrote to Winstonmom-am.
We went with Winstonmom-ya to the Harry Potter convention.

This is called "declension." Sanskrit has seven of these case endings. Each of these cases has singular, dual, and plural endings.

We have this in English, but just with pronouns:

I gave the book to her.
She gave the book to me.

We use "I" if you're the subject, and "me" if you're the object.

5 - Adjectives. We covered how adjectives don't have a gender or number. They take on the gender, case, et al of the nouns they modify.

It's sort of like those kiddie-clothes -- Geranimals -- where kids are taught how to mix colors based on the tags? Yeah, well, the adjectives always match their nouns and have the same tags.

5b - We talked about word order. In English, word order matters a lot:

Winstonmom emailed Icarus.

You can tell "Winstonmom" is the subject because it's in the first position. If we switched:

Icarus emailed Winstonmom.

That would change the meaning. In Sanskrit, because of the case endings, you can do either:

Winstonmom-ha emailed Icarus-am.
Icarus-am emailed Winstonmom-ha.

And they both mean that Winstonmom is the one doing the emailing. Word order is relatively unimportant.

That said, Sanskrit has some habitual word orders:

- The verb is usually at the end
- Adjectives precede the noun they modify
- The possessive precedes the noun ("Amy's book")
- Adverbs generally precede the verb
- The word "and" ("ca") has two options: Following each item in a list or just coming after the list.
a) "knife and fork and spoon and"
b) "knife fork spoon and"

Yes, really, I know it seems odd.

5c - There's this particle called "iti" that indicates the separation of two independent clauses. "Iti" has no meaning, it just functions as a separator.

"I went to the store and I bought an umbrella."
Sanskrit: "I went to the store / iti / I bought an umbrella."

'I went to the store' is one complete sentence, and 'I bought an umbrella' is another. "Iti" is also used to indicate direct speech:

Winstonmom said, "This sounds like Sanskrit to me."
Sanskrit: Winston said / iti / This sounds like Sanskrit to me.

Okay, first quarter Sankrit in *two* nutshells.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

6 - We learned adverbs and particles, thank god, are indeclinable. They have no endings whatsoever.

7 - We got into pronouns. There's a different pronoun for "I" for each of the seven cases. There's a different pronoun for "you" for each of the seven cases. Interestingly, there is no gender for these. No he/she/it. You have to use a demonstrative pronoun for he/she/it.

Okay, so there's a lot of memorization in Sanskrit. Also, you're forever going back and looking things up. Thank god it's a written and not spoken language.

8 - We got into demonstrative pronouns. "That" and "the" and "this" and "those" and "these." Sanskrit uses these for "he/she/it" as well.

Sanskrit has three sets of these: the masculine, feminine, and neuter. I bet you guessed that each set included all seven cases in singular, dual, and plural, just like everything else. Oh yes. Much more memorization. This is the point where my brain snapped.

Of course, as a side-note, this is also how you form "someone" or "anyone," etc. You take the demo-pronoun and tack on some- or any- accordingly.

9 - Then we got into how you form questions. There are three ways.

a) In Sanskrit you can indicate a question with a rising inflection, just like we do in English.
b) You toss in the word "api."
c) You can use question words, what, who, where, which, when, how. whom, etc. In Sanskrit these are all "k" words:

kaha - who
katha - how
kutra - where
kadaa - when
etc.

Anything having to do with time has the "-daa" ending.
Anything having to do with means, how, has the "-tha" ending.
Anything having to do with an origin, from whence or why, has the "-taha" ending.
Anything having to do with place has a "-tra" ending (though careful, because a specific point in time can be considered a place).

10 - Then we got into what I'm describing in the post, subordinate clauses and independent clauses. Complex sentences.

"When I went to the store, then I bought milk."

The relative clause opens with "ya," the main clause opens with "ta." This example has to do with time so it's "yadaa" and "tadaa." Thank god these don't have case-endings.

Sadly, when the relative points to a specific person or place, then you have to use case endings. Thank god you don't have to memorize a new set though. The "ya" and "ta" will take the endings for the demonstrative pronouns based on the subject of the clause.

That's a little tricky because you're playing Geranimals again (like with adjectives). You're getting the gender and the number from the subject --but, but, but! The relative clause can have one case ending, and the main clause can have a different one.

We do this with English pronouns without noticing, of course, it's as natural as breathing.

11 - Fun with verbs. We learned that Sanskrit verbs have "roots." So instead of citing them in the "to be" and "to look" infinitive form, they're cited in the root form.

At first I thought this would be pretty simple. You just tack on the "-ti," "-si," "-mi" endings to a root, right? No such luck. For the present indicative there are 10 different classes of verb roots. The endings are universal, but the verb root goes through a different set of changes for each class. Some get their vowels strengthened -- "i" becomes "ee." Others get an "n" sound stuck in the middle, others get an "u" sound stuck on the end, there are 10 fantastic flavors.

More memorization.

12 - Nouns with consonant endings. Now we learn that nouns also have vowel strength changes, in three fantastic flavors: strong, medium, and weak. See, the nouns we memorized before were the easy ones, because they had vowel endings.

There's good news: the consonant endings? They're all the same for every single solitary consonant-ending noun in existence. Once memorized set of single, dual, plural cases fits all.

That's first quarter Sanskrit in a nutshell.

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

That...sounds awesome. ::covets::

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hey... my reponse to you didn't post. I have to pass your comment along to my Sanskrit prof. :D

Icarus

[piplover.livejournal.com]

Sounds a lot like my Russian, only a bit more complicated. Good luck!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm told there are lot of similarities. mad_maudlin tells me that Russian has five cases where Sanskrit has seven, and then Sanskrit has that dual in addition to the plural. But I think structurally they have much in common, Sanskrit's just... more of everything.

Icarus

[http://users.livejournal.com/meara_/]

I took Sanskrit in University as my second language. I had completely forgotten every single thing I learned. It was freakin' hard (for me at any rate). What I loved about the language was that the script (is that the right word) was gorgeous.

Thanks for the quick refresher. You're making me want to dig out my old textbooks and take another look at them :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I did a really rough once-over "First quarter Sanskrit in a nutshell" here, if you want a super-quickie review before you pull those books out.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

This time, with the link! (Gah. Not sharp today.)

I did a really rough once-over "First quarter Sanskrit in a nutshell," if you want a super-quickie review before you pull those books out:

Sanskrit in a nutshell (http://icarusancalion.livejournal.com/576469.html?thread=7631829#t7631829).

[sarka.livejournal.com]

*blinks*

Okay. As an Icelander who also speaks Czech, I know a lot about correlatives and declinations. But yikes, that is frightening.

Not that I'm not trying to figure out essentially the same thing with the se/si thing in Czech...

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It is terribly complex, but! Delightful now that I understand it.

Also, doing Sanskrit homework is a little like having a puppy. People lean over and ask, "Oooo... what is that?" Then we end up in conversations about Chinese and Hebrew. It's really quite fun on many levels, but who knew it was a social mixer? ;)

Icarus

[ncp.livejournal.com]

Gah, no wonder I was so bad at Sanskrit. Even stripped-down and simplified like this, I'm having trouble following it!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think it's less that you were bad at it, and more that you didn't have my very gentle teacher. She says that "Sanskrit students are like delicate houseplants. If the conditions aren't exactly right they--" and then she makes this clenching motion, like a shivering plant on the verge of death. She eased me through my panic attack.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Also, my explanation here isn't very good. :)

[blackletter]

It all sounds so marvelous! And it makes me want to learn another dead language. I think the first parts of learning a language are some of the best--like first falling in love. All the excitement and all the discovery. (And *then* you realize that it'll actually take effort to keep you together and it's a pain, but after a while you settle into a nice, companionable familiarity and even though the first blush of romance is gone, you find that you're still in love.)

Ahem. Yes, I don't have relationships, I have languages.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I use the same analogy. I probably sound like I've had a very active dating life. No, those are just the languages I've had a few one-night stands with and never called again.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm told that I have the year-two duldroms to look forward to: coming in after a summer off and discovering I remember nothing!

We had Tibetan in our music class. Oooh, I miss Tibetan. I want to study it more.

Icarus

[greenling.livejournal.com]

Wow. You're making me want to do my homework, that's impressive. :3

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Fun, fun, fun. I got cranking late last night and got some of my homework from yesterday back this morning -- yep. Other than the usual problems with sandhi, by george, I think she has it.

Icarus

[enname.livejournal.com]

*will come back and read this when doesn't have a headcold*

It is fascinating, but I have enough trouble concentrating on staying upright let alone working out the intricacies of declinables and indeclinables. First stop though when well - re reading the post.

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

and all that is why i took sign language...
but even then, i don't think i have a head for languages.