spoken Sanskrit class this summer

[venetia ansell]

Hi Andrey,
The Indian website Jacob mentinos below has just been set up and is actively
being updated so should be helpful. I know several of the Samskrita Bharati
people in Bangalore and Delhi and can certainly help put you in touch with
the right person, just let me know.  I have also been on one of their 10
day residential courses and can tell you a bit more about their style of
teaching if you'd like.
Best,
Venetia

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Jaob Schmidt-Madsen <jacob at fabularasa.dk>wrote:

> Dear Andrey,
>
> The Samskrita Bharati website you are referring to is no longer updated.
> You should instead check out the following sites:
>
> US: http://www.samskritabharatiusa.org/
> India: http://samskritabharati.in/
>
> Caveat: While the US branch seems very well organized, prior experience
> tells me that this is not the case with the Indian branch. They can be
> very hard to get in contact with and obtain useful information from if you
> are not physically present (in which case everything is smooth and easy).
>
> To get a more critical view of the organization's philosophy of teaching -
> and the religio-nationalistic zeal that seems to inform it at some levels
> - try to pick up Merwan Hasting's dissertation "Past Perfect, Future
> Perfect: Sanskrit Revival and the Hindu Nation in Contemporary India"
> (University of Chicago, 2004).
>
> Best,
> Jacob
>
> Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
> Department of Indology
> University of Copenhagen
>
> > Dear Jacob,
> >
> > thank you very much for your post, and for me it comes just in time!
> > I would highly appreciate it, if you could tell me smth. about the
> > procedure to enroll in these Samskrita Bharati courses you've mentioned,
> > esp. the residential one in Delhi. I've heard about this organization for
> > several times but failed so far to locate them (the internet page
> > http://www.samskritabharati.org/ ) announces courses exclusively in
> > America (I'm a resident of Hamburg at the moment). I would be very
> > grateful to you if you could provide me with some additional practical
> > infos about SB-courses.
> > Thanks a lot in advance
> >
> > Andrey Klebanov
>  >
> > On 15.05.2011, at 02:08, Jaob Schmidt-Madsen wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Al,
> >>
> >> A couple of years ago I took spoken Sanskrit classes with the Samskrita
> >> Bharati organization in Delhi and Varanasi. They also teach in the
> >> medium
> >> of the language being taught, and discourage students from speaking in
> >> any
> >> other language in class. In the boarding-school-like Samvadashala in
> >> Delhi
> >> where students stay for anything from two weeks to several months, even
> >> speaking in any other language outside class is strictly prohibited (and
> >> enforced as such).
> >>
> >> Apart from the rather severe discipline upheld by Samskrita Bharati, I
> >> was
> >> quite taken by their method of instruction which enabled students with
> >> little or no prior experience with Sanskrit to quickly get a basic grasp
> >> of the language. The grammar, of course, was watered down with
> >> periphrastic forms and a predilection for a-stem nouns and thematic
> >> verbs,
> >> but still students were able to make simple conversation in Sanskrit
> >> after
> >> just a few classes. Myself included, rather to my surprise.
> >>
> >> So by all means, tell your son to go ahead and join the course (which, I
> >> am sure, will be less rigid in its discipline than Samskrita Bharati's).
> >> It is quite an eye-opener learning Sanskrit through conversation alone.
> >> You quickly learn to set up a grammatical "no nonsense" filter in the
> >> Paninian center of your brain :)
> >>
> >> Best wishes,
> >>
> >> Jacob
> >>
> >> Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
> >> Department of Indology
> >> University of Copenhagen
> >>
> >>> My son is contemplating this class in Heidelberg. He has the Sanskrit
> >>> background for it but is hesitant because it is conducted (like all
> >>> language
> >>> immersion programs) in the language being taught. I would be interested
> >>> to
> >>> hear from anyone who has taken this course in the past, hopefully
> >>> telling
> >>> Nick that it is not too threatening.
> >>>
> >>> Al Collins, Ph.D.
> >>>
> >
> >
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20110520/5fb2f216/attachment.htm>