This article only scratches the surface, I think.<p>One thing that is worth clarifying IMO: There is nothing inherently “scientific” about Sanskrit as a language by itself: instead what's remarkable are<p>1. the Sanskrit grammatical tradition, as represented especially by Pāṇini. The Sanskrit grammarians paid special attention to language, and their careful study culminated in a grammar by Pāṇini that was centuries ahead of its time, and is still throwing up new insights. The last several generations of modern linguists have read their own ideas into Pāṇini: from William Jones at the start of historical linguistics to de Saussure to Chomsky to Kiparsky. (The last of whom is an expert in both Sanskrit and modern linguistics.) Panini occupies a place in Indian thought equivalent to that of Euclid in Greek, and explicit comparisons have been drawn between the two. (E.g. all students were expected to master them respectively, these were the sciences that all others sought to emulate, ...) (I remember reading somewhere something to the effect that: among achievements of civilizations, the Egyptians have their pyramids and India has Panini's grammar.)<p>2. the cultural fact that, Pāṇini's grammar having been so exhaustive/complete, it became regarded as the <i>definition</i> of correct Sanskrit, and culturally for centuries everyone who composes in Sanskrit has just chosen to stick to this grammar. This "froze" Sanskrit and gives it a timeless quality: Sanskrit poets composing today use the same language that would have been comprehensible centuries ago; learning this one language opens up literature spanning 2500 years. With other languages that evolve naturally, this is difficult: even Shakespeare's (early) <i>modern</i> English is difficult for many.
I am currently studying Panini's Ashtadhyayi (the authoritative source of Sanskrit grammar) and I can tell you from first hand experience what is true and what is not. That Sanskrit is scientific, mathematical, ideal for AI/Comp Sci is gross exaggeration. Panini's work is truly astounding. It is extremely concise and dense. He uses some concepts to explain grammar rules that are normally not used in natural language grammars. For example, he assigns names to certain concepts and then builds on those concepts to create more and more complicated rules. There are rules that encompass other rules. There are rules that prohibit rules declared elsewhere in the book under certain circumstances. You can obtain a verb form by systematically applying 5-6 rules successively. If you know how to apply the rules you don't have to remember verb forms. They can be derived (easier said than done because there are 4000 rules and multiple rules can be applied with plenty exceptions and there are exceptions to exceptions). Panini was far ahead of his time and his work is truly amazing but there is nothing scientific/AI about it. He was a genius who devised a very clever way to succinctly list immensely complicated rules of Sanskrit grammar. Because Sanskrit grammar relies on very precise rules it is very amenable to computational analysis. However this does not mean that it is useful in Comp Sci/ AI as many Sanskrit zealots brag without any proof whatsoever.
I feel like I have read this exact article before, but instead of Sanskrit it was about Greek. I know this adds nothing of value to the discussion, but I thought it was an odd deja-vu. Does anyone perhaps know which article I am talking about?
I took Sanskrit as an undergrad at Princeton as an alternative to Latin. It was hard to absorb all the declensions, to be honest, and still connect to the text. The assumption is that you were eventually going to read Bhagava Gita or some other religious text.<p>Also, the Sanskrit course got very political, for reasons I could not relate to at all, involving the history of India. The textbook remains on my bookshelf, gathering dust.
The link "which claims that one of the great attributes of Sanskrit is that the same sentence can have two or more completely different meanings" explains clearly how this happens. Names in Sanskrit are simply descriptive attributes. Things traditionally have many names (which are simply descriptions of different aspects) but that seems unimportant in this context.<p>I don't see how that interferes with it being used as a programming language, although it doesn't seem particularly useful for the AI problems it was proposed for. There is also no need to carry over the tradition of referring to the same thing with different descriptions in a programming context.<p>It seems kinda neat that every name is necessarily descriptive as well.<p>Am I missing something, perhaps the ambiguity goes deeper than that?
Speaking about Urdu (among different languages, derived from Sanskrit):<p>It is one of the languages in which every language, word can be copied into and pronounced to a surprising accuracy. For example, this very post can be written using Urdu syntax and still be pronounced closely to as it would sound in English!<p>While Sanskrit (and to an extent Hindi) may have some unique properties, I find the syntax (script/alphabet) extremely daunting to understand (for a non Hindi/Sanskrit speaker).<p>But ultimately, research should continue I guess to see if there is any Sanskrit-derived benefits for the mankind.
We need more articles like this. The more vocal chest thumping 'patriots' do a great disservice to the rich fascinating history of India by mixing impressive facts with laughable fiction.
I would think if any human-speakable language were promoted for AI uses, it would be the machine parsable language based on formal logic, Lojban. I've thought for a while that this is the perfect halfway-point for human-computer communication.<p><a href="https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban" rel="nofollow">https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban</a>
What makes a language scientific? Apparently, modern science is born in the land where people don't bother to persuade others that their language, by nature, is more scientific than the rest.<p>The push of such argument is inherently nationalistic than 'scientific', ironically.
Panini's work is considered to be the precursor of Backus-Naur form.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form#Histo...</a>
Interesting stuff. The Korean language is considered one of the most scientific language on the planet. I'm puzzled why that NASA guy would push Sanskrit to be an actual application language. In my opinion, an HN'er should be able to read and write Korean in about an hour. I don't know if that's true for Sanskrit.<p>Taking a look at Sanskrit, it looks very cool. I think it's aesthetically better looking than Korean alphabet.<p><a href="http://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/sanskrit_cons.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/sanskrit_cons.gif</a>