My Experience Learning Sanskrit at RYI
During my second year of B.A studies at RYI, I had the opportunity to take Beginner’s Sanskrit language courses. This subject excited me because I fondly remembered taking Sanskrit classes during my fourth grade in elementary school. I still recall those lessons as being noteworthy experiences at the time. However, since I had only taken Sanskrit for a brief period, I had easily forgotten everything over these many years. My RYI Beginner’s Sanskrit group was comprised of students from all over the world. Our native languages varied from Nepalese, English, German, Bengali, Chinese, Bhutanese, Hindi, Italian and more. In the first few weeks of the class, my background in Nepali language played a significant role in helping me familiarize myself with Sanskrit scripts and vocabularies. However, when we were introduced to the dizzying arrays of declensions, conjugations and other grammatical rules, the course grew quite challenging—though in an interesting way! We had to memorize ...