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It has a roughly 50-letter alphabet and a grammar so complex that some have compared it to computer programming. Its vocabulary is steeped in subtleties, so much so that after 55 years of work on a dictionary, scholars still were on the first letter.
Virtually no one has had a casual conversation in it for hundreds of years.
The subject is Sanskrit, a language of ancient India -- and Florida International University. Miami-based FIU and Orlando-based Hindu University of America are teaming up to offer the language online this fall.
Sanskrit is relatively unusual at any American university, and the FIU/Hindu University courses appear to be the only college-credit Sanskrit classes conducted in cyberspace, according to J.L. Brockington, the secretary general of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies.
At least 3,500 years old, Sanskrit is to India roughly what Latin and ancient Greek are to Europe -- the ancestor of many modern tongues and the original form of many religious, literary and scientific works. In fact, linguists surmise that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek shared a common root language.
Sanskrit vanished from widespread use long ago, but it survives in Hindu rituals and remains one of India's 22 official languages.
Sanskrit also echoes through the English-language world, as the source of such words as "yoga," "karma" and "nirvana" -- not to mention "orange" and "sugar."
The language also has some cachet in computer science. A former NASA researcher suggested in the 1980s that Sanskrit's painstaking grammar might be a guide for programming computers to understand the meaning of words in context.
"Sanskrit's one of the real classical forms of learning in the whole world ... [It] belongs in a good university curriculum," said FIU professor Nathan Katz.
The University of Florida, Florida State and at least 21 other U.S. universities teach the language. But FIU and many other schools have too few would-be Sanskrit students to justify offering it, Katz said.
Nationwide, fewer than 500 college students were taking Sanskrit as of 2002, according to a federally financed survey by the Modern Language Association.
"[The online class] is a way we can have it available to our students and other students, and it is economically viable," said Katz, a religious-studies professor who has taught the language to some students individually.
FIU and Hindu University experimented with online Sanskrit courses last year.
They're launching the effort in earnest with "Sanskrit I" this fall, Katz said. It's open to college students or graduates whether or not they're seeking degrees. Plans ultimately call for a four-semester series of courses.
Sound files will help students with pronunciation, said M.K. Sridhar, one of Hindu University's Sanskrit professors. Special computer fonts form Sanskrit's intricate script.
Those who master it have an inside track on major Hindu and Buddhist religious texts, grammar tracts that helped shape modern linguistics, historical epics and centuries of creative writing.
"There is this great variety of literature -- there is sentimental poetry, there is comic stuff, there are dramas," explained Sanskrit textbook author Madhav M. Deshpande, a University of Michigan professor.
Sanskrit is a hot topic in its homeland, where the government is trying to nurture and revive it. Proponents see it as a cultural bedrock and a tool to forge national unity, but critics say the language is being used to advance an elitist and retrogressive political agenda.
To Diane Lillesand, it's simply a key to understanding the Buddhist writings she went to graduate school to explore.
A longtime Miami psychologist, she's planning to take the online Sanskrit course this fall.
"You kind of want to go beyond reading what other people have to say about things that were written and read them yourself," she said.
Registration for the courses starts
in August. For more information, contact spirituality@fiu.edu.
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