Can I really learn Sanskrit in the course of a summer?

Sanskrit is the oldest surviving language today, This revered ancient, traditional or classical language of India is older than Hebrew and Latin. Sanskrit is the fascinating language of Indian religion, literature, philosophy and science that exists since ancient and mediaeval periods. The history of Sanskrit literature coincides with two important periods — (1) the Vedic Period and (2) the Classical Period. In India and the countries influenced by India, this language was used by all elite educated individuals.

Sanskrit is an ancient language that is the mother of all Indian languages. Essentially every single Indian language has been extracted from the mother language of Sanskrit. Many of the important texts which are extremely valuable to the country of India have been written in this language. Sanskrit is an exceptional language and is notoriously extremely difficult to master. 

Along with other languages like Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Hindi, Sanskrit is not an easy language to master for an English native speaker. With such an intense and notoriously difficult language, an individual must contribute an exceptional amount of time, effort and dedication. Now if you are trying to learn this language in just a course of a summer, then you might be underestimating this language. To learn any language in the course of the summer is to obviously underestimate 

The said language. Even languages as easy as French and Spanish cannot be learnt in the course of a single summer, let alone trying to learn a language as tough as Sanskrit. During a single summer, you could possibly contribute an immense amount of dedication and effort but you will still lack the time required to learn this language. And hence you could either end up over stressing yourself or losing your confidence in learning this language. Every language requires a decent amount of time to master it and two months is not enough for any language. 

With that said, don’t let time demotivate you. Just because you cannot master the entire language, doesn’t mean you cannot master anything of the language. You can at least try by starting to learn the basics and build a strong foundation to learn the rest of the language later on. Considering the notorious reputation of this ancient language for being extremely tough, building a strong foundation with perfect basics will come in especially handy later on. 

You can slowly learn the rest of the language, but you can focus on learning simple grammar, sentence formation and expanding your vocabulary and your knowledge about the language. Furthermore, you can also focus on collecting as many resources as possible in order to sail through much easier later on. Instead of having to run around searching for resources while you’re trying to learn the language, you can organise yourself beforehand and do intensive research into what sort of resources are important for you.

Sanskrit has the capability to say a sentence in a minimum of words as compared to any other language due to its vastness of vocabulary. America has a dedicated University to Sanskrit, and NASA also has a Sanskrit manuscript research department there. It is the best computer-friendly language in Sanskrit. (Ref: July 1987 Forbes Magazine). Sanskrit is a language that is highly regularised. Indeed, NASA has stated that it is “the only unequivocal language in the world” and is highly suited for computer understanding. Sanskrit is the Indian state of Uttarakhand’s official language.