Purpose

To open windows of linguistic clarity for all into the religious wisdom of ancient India. To support through increased simplicity and accessibility not only those who inherit South Asian culture and identity but also those who curiously seek to explore and imbibe, in order to be able to embody and share, these incredible human inheritances.

• Why? Taleb's Lindy Effect: Something that has lasted a given duration of time is likely to last that duration into the future. New stuff disappears; old stuff stays.

  "Things that have been around for a long time are not "aging" like persons, but "aging" in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the life expectancy (sic). This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life.

Hence Sanskrit language and literature.

What's Real? Translation vs Evocation

Much commentary and evocation are sold as translation.

• Translation attempts to say what the author actually said.

  After looking at an original and reading its translation, you should be better able to understand those forms next time you encounter them. Translation helps to learn more about the language.

• Commentary is further explanation so audiences can understand it.

  After reading the commentary, you should be able to understand the context in which the author's point becomes more clear.

• Evocation is a conversation with the author, not what the author said. The evocateur is saying: Oh, that evokes a further thought in me.

  By reading an evocation, you learn about the evocateur's agenda, not about the language or its context or the original point. E's preconceptions, their arguments, the axes they want to grind, these are what come across in an Evocation.

  Evocation should be clearly labeled, like AI-generated Slop. Then, ok.

Since an L1-native reader cannot tell whether L1-presented content derived from unknown L2 is Translation, Commentary or Evocation, I propose multilinear translation graphs, which show all the layers, with prepared links for lookup and deeper diving so the reader can clearly tell what the literal forms actually indicate in the L2 language itself.

Properly worked up by a linguist and supported by software for editing, reading, and lexical and learning resources, Translation Graphs offer entry into L2 content in L2 for non-L2 speakers.

Then you can tell what's real and what's BS. You can own it.

Accessibility needs Infrastructure

Separating confounded layers makes information more accessible.

What layers?

This layer or tier hierarchy extends from farthest to nearest, from the most concrete L2 to the most abstract L1:

• "W": Waveform: recording of the L2 audio
• "I": phonetIc transcription, how it is actually said.
• "S": Source text in the original language orthography
• "R": plain Romanization without modification for access to the forms.
• "B": Break-analysed to remove sandhi and separate inflections
• "F": Further analysed to separate derivational morphemes
• "E": morphemic, or minimal Element translations
• "P": word or Phrasal translation
• "T": sentential or full-frame Translations
• "C": Commentary and Evocation
• "D": Domains, categories, bibliographic references"

These enable multilinear translation of frames of text: sentences, documents, etc.

For purposes of multi-lingual lexicography, we might reduce the WISRBFEPTCD tiers to just WSBFD while adding:

• "id": a filesafe (Roman, English) term id for symbol or lexical entry search
• "mapsto": { LG: $id .. } for lookup under the 2-letter language ID (English en, Sanskrit sa, etc.).

Work following this structure is beginning to take useful shape in the following web-accessible resources:

• Teachionary: A program with recorded audio for focussed accessible learning of vocabulary and now scripts that I've been writing since the mid 1990's is at Teachionary.com, and offers free vocabulary training in 20+ languages, many with 1000 words to learn. It is not intended as a full language learning system, but for memorizing contrast sets or groups of words or symbols, it is effective and efficient. Try it! During Sanskrit studies at UW the Teachionary data structures and code have developed to a new level using:
• TGLX: a universal Translation Graph LeXicon, at Teachionary.com/we/tglx using this multi-tier approach, with tools for import, finding gaps in lexicon, making recordings there.
• TG/ED: a multi-linear translation editor at TomVeatch.com/tg/ed
• RASA: an app to Record And Segment Audio at TomVeatch.com/we/rasa.
• Some examples mainly in my UW Sanskrit pages at TomVeatch.com/uw/skt.
• Script Teachionaries are presently in place for IPA, Devanagari, Urdu. It takes about a day to add another script, probably not much more to learn it.
• A few example pages in Sanskrit: proof of concept, a few contrast sets for grammar terms, and for memorizing vibhaktis.

I am grateful to my Sanskrit class which keeps motivating me to further develop these just-in-time-learning systems. I hope they enable this Mahāvākyas presentation take a new and more-accessible form.

Simple: I You He Am Are Is

Let us begin with the nominative singular dual and plural pronouns:

	singular	dual	plural
1p	aham	āvām	vayam	(cf I, we)
2p	tvam	yuvām	yuyam	(cf thou, you
Masculine 3p	sah	tau	te	(cf he, they)
Neuter 3p	tat	te	tāni
Feminine 3p	sā	te	tāh

 
And let's have the verb 'to be', in the present tense.

	singular	dual	plural
1p	asmi	svah	smah	(cf I, we)
2p	asi	sthah	sthah	(cf thou, you
3p	asti	stah	santi

Can you remember the boldface words? Read them out loud four times, okay?

Ritual repetition for memorization' sake: out loud, preferably in a group, enough so they stick. When you do it go horizontally across in a single row, do the singular, dual, and plural in any line of any paradigm, and that's how you learn them all, since forever. It's a bad theory of language acquisition, since it takes effort and concentration unlike natural vernacular language acquisition, but it's what we do with dead languages and plenty of scholarly energy.

Also now you know how to learn a ton of Sanskrit. Follow links here and do that, it will take you far. Beyond that, study Goldman's Introduction and Lanman's Reader and join a class at the University or the Mahavidyalaya or get yourself a Sanskrit Guru, but the main main thing is continued returning to put your attention on the right things, and practice practice practice. Being in a class is the easiest thing, you just show up. But you can also make a list and go through things one after the other systematically, and be successful. The great Sri Aurobindo used Lanman's Reader, or anyway Nala and Damayanti, to learn Sanskrit in the 1890's when he was a monolingual English speaker.

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Great: The Mahavakyas:

Ready?

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And as a bonus: A Translation Graph of

Gayatri

by Tom Veatch

Grammatical analysis according to Devavānipravesika by Goldman and Goldman.
Translations supported by Monier Williams.

Please send corrections.

Pada 1

ओम्	भूर्भुव			स्वाहा
om	bhūH		bhuva	svāhā
om	bhū	H	bhuva	svāhā
om	bhū	H	bhuva	su	ah	ā
Om	become	M sg nom	atmosphere	good,well	say	F nom sg
Om	(the light of) Being (the sun)		atmosphere	Hail!
Om	Sun and Atmosphere Hail!
Om	The Dawning Sun and the Atmosphere Hail!
An invocation in the morning to the divine becoming of light and space

Pada 2

तत्सवितुर्वरेन्यम्
tatsaviturvarenyam
tad	savitu			H	varenya			^am
tad	sa	vi	tR	H	vara	et	ya	^am
that	with	against	]N-agent	M sg nom	choice,choose	opt 3p sg	pass	M sg acc
that	Savitri, Doer-against, Impeller, impulsion				should-be-chosen-one
to that impulsion which should be chosen

Pada 3

भर्गोदेवस्य			धीमहि
bhargodevasya			dhīmahi
bhargas	deva	^asya	dhī	mahi
light,radiance Ne acc sg	deity	gen	put, hold, fix attention on,	1st pl present
light	of god		we meditate
we meditate upon its divine light

Pada 4

धियो		यो	नः	प्रचोदयात्
dhiyo		yo	naḥ	pracodayāt
dhiya	^aḥ	yaḥ	naḥ	pracod	aya	^āt
devotional thought	M sg nom	which	our	excite, instigate	caus	M sg abl
devotional thought		which	our	from exciter, instigater
devotional thought which is from our internal instigator

URL: https://tomveatch.com/tg/ed/pub/?h=Mb

Conclusion

My work aims to help everyone understand each other.

While developed for Sanskrit, the tier and lexicon and document structures, and the software tools are universal. For example, adding a new script takes a day, Teachionary contrast-sets can be recorded and segmented at 3 or 4 words per minute. My smartphone based, swiping version of RASA means the linguist's and informant's work can be done in any quiet place, not just on a desktop.

Future work is apply these tools to translation more generally, to language learning for speakers of any L1 to learn any L2.

PlayAlong: I also hope to enable TG encoding and just-in-time learning support for PlayAlong's small-group dramatic performance of L2 content for fun, connection, language learning, and literacy acquisition.

ScriptureTable.org: Another project may also benefit from TGs, where shared/submitted text bits, scriptures, may be translated.

Read Phonetics First: My universal basic literacy project at TomVeatch.com/read is also benefiting from these tools, by linking to a smartphone-accessible IPA teaching systems built on TGLX, Teachionary, and RASA. Now a QR code puts IPA into anyone's ears.

If these capabilities seem like they may be useful to you, please get in touch. I would love to find ways to make them useful to others, to fit this into your workflow and publication pathways.

Thank you for your attention and encouragement.

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