Studying alone for 7 years, are my sources reliable? Please comment

[Jazirae Neokai (Jazzaray)]

I worry that I am learning incorrectly, creating my own language!

These have been my teachers, what do you think of them?

1. Samskrita Bharati's correspondence learning program, sets of 12 booklets (I did the first 2 sets)

2. Michael Coulton's Teach Yourself Sanskrit, 1992

3. William Dwight Whitney's A Sanskrit Grammar, 1950

4. Sir Monier Williams' Sanskrit English Dictionary

5. website:  http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/grammar.fr.html  (for verb declensions)

6. online dictionary:  http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?tinput=vidarzanA&script=&direction=SE&link=yes

I appreciate immensely anything you have to say.  :o)

Jazirae 

[hnbhat]

First thing I noticed you have said you have been learning for 7 years and you listed 6 sources mostly known. But the first source you completed only 2 out of 12 booklets. I don't know whether the same case with others.

Please complete one at a time and you could have learned well before this time. That is the right way reliable than multiple sources at a time.

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[Irene Galstian]

If it's the 4-level Samskrta Bharati correspondence course, it's lovely. Lots of useful things are contained in the 10 or so little booklets they send out for each level. The only thing is, the level of Pravesha is more of an advanced beginner/lower intermediate than actual beginner. Then again, Nagaraj Paturi did say that Indian languages make it much easier to grasp Sanskrit, so maybe a beginning Indian student of Sanskrit is really not a beginner as such. 

[Prabha Pillai]

Pl can you help me how to do the samskritha bharathi course

On 12 Feb 2017 4:32 a.m., "Irene Galstian" <gnos...@gmail.com> wrote:

If it's the 4-level Samskrta Bharati correspondence course, it's lovely. Lots of useful things are contained in the 10 or so little booklets they send out for each level. The only thing is, the level of Pravesha is more of an advanced beginner/lower intermediate than actual beginner. Then again, Nagaraj Paturi did say that Indian languages make it much easier to grasp Sanskrit, so maybe a beginning Indian student of Sanskrit is really not a beginner as such. 

On 11 Feb 2017, at 02:54, hnbhat <hnbh...@gmail.com> wrote:

First thing I noticed you have said you have been learning for 7 years and you listed 6 sources mostly known. But the first source you completed only 2 out of 12 booklets. I don't know whether the same case with others.

Please complete one at a time and you could have learned well before this time. That is the right way reliable than multiple sources at a time.

On 11 February 2017, at 07:53, "Jazirae Neokai  (Jazzaray)" <jne...@gmail.com> wrote:

I worry that I am learning incorrectly, creating my own language!

These have been my teachers, what do you think of them?

1. Samskrita Bharati's correspondence learning program, sets of 12 booklets (I did the first 2 sets)

2. Michael Coulton's Teach Yourself Sanskrit, 1992

3. William Dwight Whitney's A Sanskrit Grammar, 1950

4. Sir Monier Williams' Sanskrit English Dictionary

5. website:  http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/grammar.fr.html  (for verb declensions)

6. online dictionary:  http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?tinput=vidarzanA&script=&direction=SE&link=yes

I appreciate immensely anything you have to say.  :o)

Jazirae 

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः]

Your sources are "reliable". You find them enthralling I presume? If not (as I suspect), I encourage you to take up kAvya - esp. a simple work like rAmAyaNa and read it fully with commentary.

शुक्रवार, 10 फ़रवरी 2017 को 6:23:24 अपर UTC-8 को, Jazirae Neokai (Jazzaray) ने लिखा:

[Irene Galstian]

Reading kavya on your own just like that needs a fair bit of staying power. I tried that and in the beginning spent about an hour per verse just on undoing sandhi because I knew very few words. In the beginning the greatest use I found for kavya was reading Mahabharata without understanding, to train myself to read Devanagari well, and to listen to the rhythm of the sounds. I did that for about 20-30 mins every day. This may sound odd, but it was time well spent. If you are reading an unfamiliar script, and the language has rich morphology and unexpected syntax, then the deck is stacked against you, until you do something about it. I see this again and again with my Russian learners.

There exist assisted readings, like Monier-Williams' Nalopakhyana, Scharf's Ramopakhyana, and Sargeant's Gita. They are helpful to an extent, but I found that it's better to start with a simpler but unassisted Sanskrit, so you're facing pages of Devanagari-only text, and it's up to you to come to terms with that text. If you're not thrown out of the nest, it'll always be scary to fly on your own.

As a source of simple unadapted texts, I can offer Sanskrit Chandamama for 1984-2000,  give or take a few issues. Straightforward language, goes well with tea/short breaks at work. Can share PDFs.

I also found Kathasaritsagara enjoyable. I don't have a PDF of that, but can scan my copy little by little, or you could get your own here, for example:

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/kathasaritsagara-of-somadeva-bhatta-sanskrit-text-only-NZA259/

Maurer's and Aklujkar's textbooks are useful. I didn't get along with Coulson (lost the will to live). But anyway, whichever textbook you take, the Samskrta Bharati booklets still have a lot going for them.

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[Manish Godara (मनीष गोदारा)]

> Pl can you help me how to do the samskritha bharathi course

http://dlp.samskritabharatiusa.org (if you are in the US, this link should be useful).

Also, instead of 12 booklets per level, I believe now there is a single big book that is basically a reprint of those 12 copies in single copy (from what I've seen)

You could also look for the courses offered by Samskrita Bharati locally or attend one of the residential three-day camps (usually during long weekends).

 

[Jazirae Neokai (Jazzaray)]

Thank you hn bhat, good advice, I think I should finish the Bharati program.  Just to clarify, I did half of it (2 sets, not 2 booklets).  I spent 2 months in Sri Lanka and spent the entire time immersed in them (back when India made us leave the country for 2 months as a terrorist precaution).  As for Coulson, I read all of it and also used it extensively as a reference.  As for Whitney, I referred to it extensively as well and covered most of it that way.  I'm especially interested in accents.

[Jazirae Neokai (Jazzaray)]

Thank you  विश्वासो वासुकिजः !  I'm so relieved to know they're reliable!  Enthralled?  Even with grammar being a rather dry subject, yes I am!  I really want to write and speak.  But I have so many questions and would love to have my sentences critiqued.  Probably what I need most is to read Sanskrit, and so yours and others' suggestions and offerings are most welcome!

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

I think you could benefit from Bhandarkar's - yes, the same one after whom the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute is named - two books on Sanskrit Grammar.  These were used for several decades as textbooks in schools, mainly in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency and were immensely popular.  They are available for free downloads at https://archive.org/details/firstbooksanskr00bhangoog and at  https://archive.org/details/secondbooksansk01bhangoog

Arvind Kolhatkar.

[Jazirae Neokai (Jazzaray)]

Thank you Irene, all of your comments are helpful.  Thank you for affirming the Bharati program, I will finish that.  I looked up Sanskrit Chandamama and it looks wonderful!  Thanks for your kind offer to share.  If I can download them myself, I'll save you the trouble :o)  I looked at Kathasaritsagara and it looks too difficult right now.

What do you mean by " the deck is stacked against you, until you do something about it." ?  What did you have in mind?  

I'm downloading 108 Upanishads with commentaries by Upanishad Brahma Yogin.  It looks like I can download the Vedas and the Epics and everything!

[Irene Galstian]

I meant that when learning a language like Sanskrit several skills need to be worked on in parallel, and since you are learning the language as an adult, you can take charge and speed up the task by applying strategy.

For example:

1. Unfamiliar script. To counteract, read every day.

2. Extensive vocabulary and sandhi. To counteract, first study the theory of sandhi in a grammar book. Then read a dictionary like a novel (I use Macdonell for that, as my Apte is really badly printed, and Monier-Williams is too big for my handbag). The goal is not to memorise the dictionary, but to teach your eyes the visual patterns of Sanskrit words, and to say them out loud, while you're at it. This activity dramatically reduced my sandhi opening time.

3. Grammar. This is a fact of life. Memorising paradigms and talking to oneself in Sanskrit works well. Model sentences are given in the Samskrta Bharati course: first repeat the given sentences until they roll of the tongue smoothly, then create your own sentences by substitution, then keep saying them again and again, until you say them without hesitation and thinking. If you are lucky and have access to a fluent speaker of Sanskrit, listen to their intontation and copy it mercilessly.

4. Potentially strange syntax. Samskrta Bharati course can really help with this, but if you are a native speaker of an Indian laguage you may not have this problem.

5. Usage/style, i.e. how to speak and write Sanskrit without sounding like you've escaped from the 7th century. I don't know how to solve this one yet, working on it. If you know how to solve it, please share.

Hope this makes some sense. Best of luck with the study. Write if you want me to share any files.

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[JAZIRAE NEOKAI]

Wonderful!  Do they have English comments?  I can't look now because my computer is very busy downloading 108 Upanishads!  🙄

Thanks Arvind!

Jazirae

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 2:05 PM, Arvind_Kolhatkar <kolhat...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think you could benefit from Bhandarkar's - yes, the same one after whom the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute is named - two books on Sanskrit Grammar.  These were used for several decades as textbooks in schools, mainly in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency and were immensely popular.  They are available for free downloads at https://archive.org/details/firstbooksanskr00bhangoog and at  https://archive.org/details/secondbooksansk01bhangoog

Arvind Kolhatkar.

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[JAZIRAE NEOKAI]

अपि  शक्यता  अस्ति  यत्  सया  सह  संभाषणम्  रोचेथाः ?

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[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

These books are in English.

AK

[Manish Godara (मनीष गोदारा)]

To learn to speak and get started, see if you can attend Samskrita Bharati local classes.  Once you are fluent at basic level, you could use other methods. Some collection of Samskrit lectures from Samskrita Bharati camps exist here - http://www.SbBayArea.org/en/resources (see audio video link).

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[JAZIRAE NEOKAI]

धन्यवादः  अर्विन्द्  !

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 7:13 PM, Arvind_Kolhatkar <kolhat...@gmail.com> wrote:

These books are in English.

AK

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