As controversy raged over making Sanskrit available to kids over German, I was gifted a book written by the former Chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission Dr Raja Ramanna. The book is called 'Sanskrit & Science'. Its a short booklet that very effectively makes its point. I have never studied Sanskrit but the book did inspire me to study the language. Here is what I picked up from the book- Sanskrit has a scientific base unlike any other language driven largely by its grammatical organisation. The grammatical organisation was formulated by Panini 2500 years ago in a set of 8 books of 4 chapters each. Sanskrit grammar is made up of 2 parts - roots and rules. Roots are embody certain general concepts - vowel, consonant, noun, pronoun etc. Rules define how words can be constructed by rules and create compound words form words. Those familiar with modern day 4th generation programming languages will find this very familiar. Phonetics as a ...