RTFMmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 6

cute animals

abbreviations

about boxes

about arrows

parens show labels

blue letters

About articles.

Difference between 'I write' and 'I am writing'.

about sexism

Back to contents .

cute animalsmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 7

(Technically these are called "navigation icons", but most of them look like cartoons of cute animals.)

On top of every article you can see --

svastika -- click this icon and it will move to the top of the page.

cat -- takes to the CATalog page, obviously.

book -- list of all articles in roughly alphabetical order. Use control-f to find there whatever you want to find.

grid -- rules in the pANini order, grouped by chapters

AZ -- rules in alphabetical order. Useful if you don't know if you need rosupi or rossupi.

rabbit -- list of all boxed words. See about boxes for details.

example-finder hedgehog -- if you remember that you read the example word cintayati in a rule yesterday, but you forgot how to get to that rule, click hedgehog, hit control-F, period, cinta

turtle and spider -- ignore these two. These are scaffolding and I'm using them myself while I build the website. I'll remove them when it's finished.

When searching in the pages that have lots of Sanskrit words in them, you have to spell things like you say them -- clessic sanni will work, clesHsic sanMni won't. See vAzari, anusvA.

Some pages have priods at the start and end of things, so that if you type control-F tuk period you get things that end in tuk.

For the relationship between the swastika symbol and Nazism, see Wikipedia on Swastika.

abbreviationsmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 8

afaik "as far as i know"

aka "also known as"

ceteris paribus = "everything else being the same"

eg = exempli gratia = for instance

etc. = et caetera = and so on

ff = and following, and others

idk = "I have no clue, sorry"

ie = id est = this is, namely, in other words

mutatis mutandis = "after making the necessary changes"

wafti = We Apologize For The Inconvenience

wtf = kaSTanM dhik

Back to RTFM .

about boxesmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 9

This website has lots of strange words like the " chop", " wordfinal", and " cluster" (see for instance rule chop wordfinal cluster ), which appear within boxes. I call these "jargon" words, or terms. They do not have the ordinary meanings used in normal English, but special meanings used only when talking grammar. For instance, plain "many" means "many, but if I write it as " many", within a box, it means "three or more".

If you click the boxed many, that should take you to a page that explains what many means.

If you want to check the meaning of " many", but you see no boxed " many" nearby, click the rabbit icon. That will show a list of all boxed words.

Words with a green box, like many and number, have a green box because they are made up of Roman letters. Words with a bluish box like su and au are made of Sanskrit letters.

about arrowsmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 10

In these pages, arrows show that some rule changed something. For instance, if I write --

vRt + ta → vRt + zap + ta → vRt + zap + te → vart + zap + te

This means that some rule changed vRt into vRt + zap, then some rule changed ta into te, then some rule changed vRt into vart.

There are several sort of arrows.

PLAIN ARROWS

Plain arrows just mean that something changed because of a rule, but they don't show what rule made the change. for instance, here some rule changed ta into te''' --

As + ta → Aste

But I don't tell you which rule made the change. I do that when I think youcan figure out yourself which rule made the change, or when it is the same rule mentioned in earlier examples.

WIGGLY ARROWS

Wiggly arrows just mean that something changed because of more than one rule, but they don't show what rules are those.

bhU + @hard liG tip bhavet

bhU + @soft liG tip bhUyAt

CIRCLED ARROWS

Click a circled arrow to get to the rule that made that change.

As + ta →Tita Aste "he sits"

Sometimes when an arrow has no circle, you can know which rule worked by clicking what is after the arrow. For instance --

As + ta → As + te''' → Aste "he sits"

Here clicking the te''' you can get to the rule that made the te, which is rule Tita.

RED ARROWS

A red arrow means that the rule that we are explaining right now made that change.

For instance, inside rule Tita, you can see this example --

As + ta Aste

Here the red arrow shows that rule Tita worked, changing a into "e. There is not a circle around the red arrow because we don't have to go elsewhere to see the explanation of rule Tita, we are already reading it.

COSMETIC ARROWS

Sometimes I use an arrow just because I am removing plus signs, spaces and labels, even though no rule is making any actual change. For instance, here --

pac + zap + tip → pacati "he cooks"

no rule is actually removing anything. It's just that the label letters are written and the left of the arrow (so that you may jump to the zap and tip pages) but are not written at the right (so that the word pacati is written like it actually souns).

Back to RTFM .

Parens show labels.mmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 11

When I explain the affix zyan in page zyan, I write it as (z)ya(n). The parens mean that the z and the n are label letters, and the real affix is just ya --

nRt + zyan + tip → nRt + (z)ya(n) + ti(p) → nRtyati

In page yak I type ya(k), to mean that the k is not real --

dRz + ya(k) + te''' → dRz ya te

Similarly, if I write "the root gam(L)", the true root is gam, and L is a label that is chanted after it in the dhAtupATha.

Sometimes, I write a moondot (~) after a vowel to mean it's a label.

Example.

I usually just write "the root gam", because most of the time students don't need to know that this root carries L label.

Yet, in some places(such as puSAdi;dyutAdy;LditaH) I spell that gam root either as gam(L), or as gamL~, or as gamL.

Blue letters.mmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 12

The blue letters of this website must be pronounced as they are written. For instance, here --

evam uktasH sa rAjJA tu saJMjayo vAkyam abravIt

the blue s must be pronounced s and the blue J must be pronounced J.

There are two kinds of blue letters --

blue zar

blue nasals

Back to RTFM .

About articles.mmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 13

Many grammar books use only grammatically correct English in translations. Like --

kadalIphalAni kapir abhuGkta "the monkey ate some bananas"

kadalIphalAni kapir abhuGkta "a monkey ate the bananas"

But I often use an I-Tarzan-you-Jane style of English --

kadalIphalAni kapir abhuGkta "monkey ate bananas"

kadalIphalaGM kapir abhuJjata "monkeys ate banana"

I do this because every Sanskrit kapis can be translated as "the monkey" or "a monkey" or "monkey", and every kadalIphalAni can be "the bananas" or "nbananas" or "some bananas". So, you may add just whichever of "the" or "a" or "some" that makes sense to you in the situation, and that will be a correct translation too.

My Polish, Russian and Japanese students are very happy with this. The others get used to it soon.

# I do this because it makes my students less confused. Every kapis may mean "the monkey" or "a monkey" So I tell my students to add "the" or "a" whenever they feel like it, but I won't choose for them.

Similarly, if I translate ayaGM gacchati as "this one goes", do not take that "this one" as the only possible wording for ayam. More often than not, just "this goes" or "he goes" is closer to what a native speaker of English would say. I am using "this" just to remind the reader that ayam means "this".

Also, if I explain that nayati means "carries", feel free to add "he", "she" or "it" in front.

Difference between 'I write' and 'I am writing'.mmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 14

Somebody, who has much more experience with spoken English than I have, told me once that I should not write my translations of Sanskrit verbs in this style --

kadalI-phalAni pacAmi "I cook bananas"

pATalAn gajAn pazyati "he sees pink elephants"

because it I get a more natural-sounding English if I translate like this --

kadalI-phalAni pacAmi "I am cooking bananas"

pATalAn gajAn pazyati "he is seeing pink elephants"

That is quite a valid objection, because, In english, a sentence like "I cook bananas" only sounds natural in contexts like --

"I cook bananas for breakfast"

"I cook bananas every Saturday"

"I only cook bananas when I make Cuba-style rice"

However, my readers should remember that "I cook" and "I am cooking" are the same in Sanskrit, pacAmi. so whatever I translate as "cooks" may also be translated as "is cooking". If a sentence with "cooks" sounds unnatural to you, just add "often" or "every Saturday" to the translation and that will fix the problem. Or just replace "cooks" with "is cooking".

about sexismmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 15

The verb krAmate means "lives". Yet, I often translate those words adding a pronoun in front --

jIvati "he lives"

saMsUte "she gives birth"

zcotati "it oozes"

Please remember that even though I use "he" most of the time, EVERY verb in the third person singular may mean "he / she / it".

Sanskrit has no words for "he / she / it". In their place they often use words meaning "this one" or "that one", such as ayam or sas, but using nothing is fine too, and very common.

I do not write "he / she / it lives" only because I'm lazy.

The preferential use of "he" rather than "she" might be misinterpreted to mean sexism. It actually is due to sloth, which is worse: I'm too lazy to type the "s". Notice that sloth made it into the list of seven capital sins, while sexism didn't.

This dont-trust-the-pronoun rule applies only to verbs proper, and not to verblikes, that are nouns and therefore show gender --

rAmam anugatA "she followed rAma"

rAmam anugataH "he followed rAma"