One of the things I have been working really hard on during my online yoga teacher training with the amazing teachers at Arohan Yoga is proper Sanskrit pronunciation. Whether it’s mantras, pose names, or philosophical terms, getting it right is important to me. I think it’s a safe guess the reason why goes back to two things.
First, having a difficult to pronounce name. My given name is the “wrong” gender, which makes people mispronounce my middle name, which can be a male or female name depending on how you say it. And then my family name is spelled completely differently than other people with the same last name. So yeah, nobody ever gets my name right on the first try, but it’s handy for weeding out telemarketers (Is that still a thing? Does that still happen?).
Secondly, all the years I’ve spent working on Welsh pronunciation only to hear other people butcher it or not even try. Listen, I get that Welsh looks pretty incomprehensible to anyone that doesn’t know the language, but an unpronounceable language is an oxymoron. It can’t exist. Welsh is even more consistent with the various pronunciations than other Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish, Breton; and I hear people pronouncing Irish stuff correctly all the damn time.
It’s my way of being respectful. Using the right names for things is one of the most basic ways of honoring them. Not everybody feels that way and that’s ok, I don’t see any point in judging something like that. But if you feel the same way, you too can make use of these flashcards and this playlist to practice your Sanskrit.
Use the right arrow to advance the cards and reveal the meaning of the vocabulary or the answer to the prompt. I’ve grouped the flashcards, so make sure to page through the entire set! Happy studying!
