Dina On Sanskrit Pronunciation

Dina Anukampana Das has specialized in teaching perfect Sanskrit Pronunciation using
phonetics and what he calls 'Simplified Romanized Sanskrit'. This document here illustrates
the key point in how to pronounce Sanskrit accurately and is especially helpful for English
speaking people who love Sanskrit
Dina On Sanskrit Pronunciation:

=======================
I refer to my Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide which is online at www.srs-tips.on.to
I believe that for most people, like myself, it is simply fascinating when we first find out that
Sanskrit is so *well designed' by our creator to fit with our heads!! that each sound is
precisely defined by the position of our tongue!!! (Sanskrit = sam + krt = samyak + krti =
perfectly done/designed) In every aspect, Sanskrit is perfect - for instance, just read this
fascinating article http://on.to/sanskrit-nasa-report to see how it is more perfect than any
man-made computer language can ever hope to be.... yet man-made computer languages
CANNOT BE SPOKEN AND UNDERSTOOD BY MAN!!!!! Yet sanskrit can be spoken and
understood by men. It is surely of divine origin!
The 25 basic consonants of sanskrt are actually called SPARSHAS. Sparsha means our
sense of touch. So instead of tying to hear the sounds (a beginner of any new language
CANNOT HEAR what is correct or not - we are deaf to those sounds which lie outside the
spectrum of our mother tongue - as proven by Dr Tomatis whose work is being continued at
the Language Laboratory in Auroville, near Pondicherry, India. So instead of trying to hear
what we cannot hear, simply feel where your tongue makes contact and then try to
consciously control that movement. The experience of learning sanskrt pronunciation in the
unorthodox way that I teach it is exactly like learning how to drive a car with manual
transmission even though we already know how to drive an auto transmission car.
(Generally, we all can speak, but the process of how our tongues move, how our ears hear
etc is all done unconsciously, involuntarily but learning Sanskrit the kinaesthetic way helps
us take control of it very easily and quickly through the simple exercises and special charts
that I have developed with the help of an expert in Accelerated Learning and Neuro
Linguistic Programming, Peter Ho (Padma Sambhava Das).
Sanskrt is REALLY EASY TO PRONOUNCE, especially when we use the simple I.A.S.T.
(see wikipedia) Romanized Sanskrit - with just 33 alphabets we can cover the full spectrum
of Sanskrit sounds and bypass the need to learn 480+ devanagari characters! The IAST
system is ingenious and it is absolutely loss-less and helps beginners **see**the**patterns**
in the alphabets very easily. For example, regarding the 3 biggest pronunciation mistakes
made by beginners:
a) Mixing up short and long letters - we can **SEE** that all the long letters have a line on
top of them (except for 'e' and 'o' which are always long - back in 1912 when this system was
invented in Athens, it was expensive to make a new font, so since there was no short
version, they did not make a new font with a line above it - the Library of Calcutta however
has improved on IAST and added lines above long e and long o - this is because most other
Indian languages do have short and long versions of e and o, therefore for computer
software to process multilingually, the lines have to be added in. I have introduced a system
I call Simplified Romanized Sanskrit, where we teach students to not only put a line above
the long vowels but a slash after it too to keep it separate from , because that will make sure
that they stress upon that vowel without 'touching' the next consonant - see www.srs-
tips.on.to for my explanation of this concept of BREAKS after every long vowel - it explains
VISUALLY what is the difference in sound between Sin and Seen, Bin and Been, Din and
Dean, Bend and Band, Fit and Feet etc etc. If one masters this skill, to first visually
distinguish all long and short vowels, then understand the difference, then consciously
lengthen the long vowels and shorten the short ones, then he quickly comes to 70%
accuracy in his Sanskrit pronunciation, and if he keeps practsing this daily for 3 weeks, his
hearing will then develop, and he will actually be able to hear the difference between short
and long vowels as a native speaker can. In my Gita Slokas Book it is REALLY EASY
because i have pre-marked ALL long vowels with a red slash - see a sample that anyone
can singalong to at www.gitasingalong.on.to and download the entire book *for free* at
www.dinasgitabook.on.to
b) Not distinuishing 'soft' (dental) consonants from 'hard' (cerebral) ones - it makes our
Sanskrt sound crude - just like if I say 'tank you' (water tank 'tank') instead of 'thank you' it
sounds somewhat unrefined to put it mildly, similary with sanskrt. With Romanized Sanskrit
beginners can be told to simply look out for the dots! The word DOT is cerebral - so
whenever we **SEE** a Dot, we just have to remember to touch the ridge (hard part of our
palate) with the tip of our tongue. This rule cannot be used if reading from Devanagari -
there is no similiarity at all or distnguishing feature between the dental and cerebral
alphabets visually - so one has to tax his memory to recognize which alphabets are which!
and c) Not bothering to actually aspirate (make air come out by pushing the diaphragm
upwards) the Aspirated Consonants. With Rom Sansk we can easily **SEE** all the
Aspirated Consonants have an H in them - H=hot air! So a beginner quickly can connect
seeing the H with moving his diaphragm. However in Devanagari, again, there is no visual
distinguishing factor to identify the members of this group (namely kha, gha, cha, jha, t.ha,
d.ha, tha, dha, pha and bha) (We also teach the students to keep one hand in front of the
mouth to FEEL the hot air, and the other on the solarplexus to FEEL the movement of the
diaphragm - this helps immensely - the traditional way of expecting the newbie to hear the
aspirated sound fails miserably.)
The fourth common error wd be mixing up or not differentiating the sibilants ('s' sounds) -
again, Romanized Sansk to the rescue - there are 3 sibilants - pure s is just plan and simple
s, like in sun. but the other two have a 'shhhhh' sound - one has a mark (accent) above it -
ś and one with a dot below it - ṣ We just have to remember that when the mark is above,
push our tongue upwards as much as possible (make the hole as small as possible) and
when the mark is below, then bring the tongue down as low as possible (make the hole as
big as possible)
So these are some of the things which I teach in my Sanskrit Pronunciation Course. Here is
a tv interview on the same subject - www.dina-gj.on.to and here are some reviews by
scholars of the seva (service) I am trying to do for the pleasure of sri-sri guru-gauranga:
From Australan National Unversity's Dr McComas Taylor www.cert-anu.on.to

From Sitaram Vidyalaya's Prof S Mohan www.cert-mohan.on.to
From Tirupati Rashtriya Sanskrt Vidyalaya's Prof R S Tripathi www.cert-tripathi.on.to
From Divine Life Society Malaysia's President, HH Swami Guhabhaktananda Maharaj
www.cert-swamiguha.on.to
and feedback from recent course participants in Australia www.coursefeedback.on.to
Dina-Anukampana Das
Sanskrit Pronunciation Specialist
========================
If you are interested in discussing this matter, please write me - dinaanu 'at' gmail 'dot' com
or visit my website www.gitajayanti.org Happy Singing and Happy Chanting! Hare Krishna!

Dina On Sanskrit Pronunciation

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Dina Anukampana Das has specialized in teaching perfect Sanskrit Pronunciation using

Dina On Sanskrit Pronunciation:

I refer to my Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide which is online at www.srs-tips.on.to

From Australan National Unversity's Dr McComas Taylor www.cert-anu.on.to

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