Sanskrit : Exercise

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Exercise

Learning a script, that too Devanagari, may appear to be a formidable task. Scripts of Indian languages are not easy to master quickly but once the underlying principle of the aksharas is understood, reading becomes very easy. Unlike the letters of the Roman alphabet where there is no clustering of the letters in the alphabetic sequence such as labials etc., the aksharas of Sanskrit are extremely well organized into clearly discernible groups. The student is advised to remember the sequence of aksharas in each group.

Given below are some exercises at identifying the basic aksharas of Sanskrit.  Now that you have learnt the basic writing system used in Sanskrit, you might want to see for yourself how well you can identify and read Devanagari script.

1. Identify the following aksharas and speak them.  You might also wish to distinguish vowels from consonants.
   
   

   इ	ऐ	क	ऌ	ह
   ओ	य	द	ख	त
   घ	ध	र	ड	छ

   
   
2. Speak out the following aksharas.
   
   

   सो	हो	बो	नौ	दे
   वा	मा	तृ	कू	ढो

   
   
3. Speak out the following conjuncts.
   

   ट्रै

   क्रो

   छि

   षे

   दे

   
   
4. No clues are given but figure out what the words are.  We have put spaces between the letters for you to identify the aksharas easily.
   
   इ ङू गू ऌ षू
   गू री कू
   के टि नू
   ही ब्रू
   अ वे सू ता
   जा प नी सू
   अ मे रि क नू
   ओ मै गाडू
   दिसू र्इसू नीटू
   गुडू एवसेर्सैसू

At this point you should see the advantage of a phonetic system of writing!

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