Written by For native speakers of most modern Romance languages (apart from some reminiscence of the neuter case), Nordic (Germanic) languages, English, Dutch, or Bulgarian, it is usually considered “difficult” to learn an inflected language like Latin, German or Russian: cases are a priori felt as too strange, too “archaic”, too ‘foreign’ to the own system of [...]
READ MORE »Posts in category Indo-European languages
Swastika: A Stupid Taboo in European and American countries
The swastika (Wikipedia)- from Sanskrit svástika स्वास्तिक – is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing (卐) or left-facing (卍) forms. The term is derived from Sanskrit svasti, meaning well-being. The Thai greeting sawasdee is from the same root and carries the same implication. It is a widely-used symbol [...]
READ MORE »Om mani padme hum: an etymology of a mantra common to Hinduism and Buddhism
I was watching the TV this morning and heard some oriental-looking people in a (apparently) Tibetan film saying a sentence I had heard already in other films about India and the Tibet: oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ (Devanagari ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ), probably the most famous mantra in Buddhism, the six syllabled mantra of the bodhisattva [...]
READ MORE »Tamil vs. Sanskrit, or Indian ‘official classical languages’, and the first tongue in India (AKA. Indus Valley Civilization language)
I have read and heard many stupidities regarding linguistic status and language differences: – Brazilian is a different language (i.e. not Portuguese), because Galician is a language also (yes, Galician is interestingly enough a ‘language’ which stops in the administrative division between Spain and Portugal – more or less like Valencian and Catalan). – French [...]
READ MORE »