Learn Sanskrit In Selangor Malaysia.

Colour Coding!

I have noted that sometimes those who are not used to the Devanagari script have a slight problem reading it initially.

Devanagari script even though its written from the left to right but at times we do go backwards to write the Gunita(diacritical marks).

For eg:

To write  हरिणः  we start off by writing ह  र  first, then we go back to fill up the diacritical mark ि for the  र and then we write the णः and we get हरिणः

Those who are not used to the Devanagari script find this a bit difficult at the beginning because in the Roman script we do not go backwards to write anything, its strictly unidirectional.

Devanagari can at times be bi-directional.
Let's take a look at the word   हरिणः

Some beginners who haven't committed all the alphabets to memory  find it a little hard to read the diacritical marks not sure it belongs to which alphabet.

for eg some who haven't fully grasped the script might think  हि is a letter  not realizing that no such letter exists and not realizing that the  िactually belongs to the र as in रि.


So to overcome this initial hiccup in new learners who have not committed everything to memory, I recommend colour coding when writing.

Use a different colour for each alphabet till you commit all to memory.

Eg:

ह  रि णः  

So you would know which diacritical mark belongs to which letter.

So write away in the colors of the rainbow!