Rig Veda, ta'ntra, nUl, and sUtra

[bpj at netg.se]

At 06:59 4.4.1997 +0100, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:
>On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, George Thompson wrote:
>
>[..]
>
>>
>> As for a Skt. term for "world-wide web", perhaps Rta'sya ta'ntu is as good
>> as any. ;-)
>>
>
>In a private email conversation, Prof. Aklujkar suggested to me the term,
>"viSva-vyApI-vitAna" - for a similar alliterative effect as in English.
>vitAna (extension) has the connotation of stretching out too.

If this is to be put to a straw vote I really like this one. (And I must
confess I never liked the image of the world caught in a net...). There is
of course also the "indrajAla" as a useful simile in the old literature.

>Isn't there a language-czar somewhere in an Indian govt. office whose job
>is to coin such terms for use in Hindi? I wonder what they have come up
>with.

Unless they are any better than their Icelandic and Scandinavian
counterparts, with their mindless calques on English that in any case run
athwart the linguistic sensibilities of most people, it is probably
worthwhile to give them a match on this. Incidentally the WWW would become
VVV in Swedish also: "Vaerlds-vida Vaeven".

Just a thought: In Devnagri the ellipsis of "viSva-vyApI-vitAna" would be
"vi.vyA.vi". Unless "vivyAvi" is already an existing Sanskrit word (at
least it is not in my desk-side dictionary [Mylius]) it might come in handy
for day-to-day use, and sounds a lot better than "vavava".

>
>S. Vidyasankar

Philip Jonsson <bpj at netg.se>