On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 12:15 AM, Srini Ramakrishnan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Jeremy Bornstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  [...]
>
> > I find
>  > it an interesting language, and useful from the brain engineering
>  > point of view more than anything else.
>
>  Apologies, I of course totally understand that motivation, and have
>  picked up a couple of languages in my past for no other reason other
>  than that they sounded interesting.
>
>  Cheeni
>

I must agree that whenever I took up a language course, the inevitable
reaction was, "Why are you learning it?" I had only the Cheeni reason
to offer!

Having said that, I must say that foreign languages are taught much
better than Indian languages here (in India I mean)...the latter are
taught like school subjects and there is no hearing/speaking exercise
at all. And there is such a stress on grammar that the fun of learning
the language is lost. The basic Sanskrit course that I took ended in
an exam which was just a grammar/maths paper....though the teacher did
try to speak only in Sankrit, the students were not responsive, and
were very bothered about the marks they would get in the exam. I did
not like the approach and since there were not enough students for the
nextlevel course, I did not pursue it further...and have forgotten all
that I learnt, which is what happens when I stop learning a language
after the entry-level course.

Deepa.
>

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