Like many Indians, I studied Sanskrit in high school. But place a text in front of me and it is barely comprehensible. But reviving the ancient language, which is so closely linked to Hinduism and Hindu religious texts, has always been a pet project for the BJP, the right-wing party that leads the new Indian government.
In May, several of its new cabinet ministers chose to take their oath of office in Sanskrit. But it is precisely this fusion that is stirring up a new controversy in a country where language politics has always been an emotive and sensitive issue. It is being opposed most strongly by politicians from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The Tamil language is not derived from Sanskrit and many there see the promotion of the language as a move by Hindu nationalist groups to impose their culture on religious and linguistic minorities.
It's a debate that's unlikely to end any time soon in a country which boasts of several hundred languages and dialects. And while the government says it has no hidden agenda, there are some who wonder if the motive is to educate or to indoctrinate young minds. Can Modi win trust of minorities? Telangana - a linguistic state. Austronesian Language Family. Baltic Branch.
Berber Branch. Caucasian Language Families. Celtic Branch. Chadic Branch. Chinese Branch. Constructed Languages. Creole Languages. Critical Languages. Cushitic Branch. Dravidian Language Family.
Endangered Languages. Eskimo Aleut Language Family. Germanic Branch. Heritage Languages. Indigenous Languages of Australia. Indigenous Languages of South America. Indo-Aryan Branch. Indo-European Language Family. Indo-Iranian Branch. International Languages. Iroquoian Language Family. Khoisan Language Family. Language Isolates. Mayan Language Family. NaDene Language Family. Niger-Congo Language Family. Nilo-Saharan Language Family. Oto-Manguean Language Family.
Pidgin Languages. Romance Branch. Semitic Branch. Sino-Tibetan Language Family. Siouan Language Family. Slavic Branch. Tai-Kadai Language Family. Tibeto-Burmese Branch. Like English, or Hindi, or Tagalog — or, for that matter, Sanskrit. And Briggs alerted AI folks to something fascinating and useful: that the grammar of Sanskrit — structured and rule-based as it was — had significant lessons for this business of natural language understanding.
All of which is fascinating enough. That second is an essentially meaningless statement. For one thing, different kinds of software are suited to different computer languages. Much of AI research has happened in Lisp, for example, because of its ability to manipulate words and sentences — but Lisp is nearly unheard of outside AI.
The way computers are built requires a certain clear and unmistakable logic in how we give instructions to them. Nobody has yet found a way to do that in any natural language, whether Sanskrit or English or Tagalog. Why would a state force its students — or at least, the students in government schools — to learn Sanskrit? This is not to suggest that no students must learn it, not at all.
After all, plenty of the collective wisdom of this country, gathered over many centuries, is recorded in Sanskrit and is, we believe, stored somewhere safe.
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