More about अकारान्त words

In the last post I wrote about अकारान्त  words (words ending with अ. Hope you remember it. Today, I would write more about these अकारान्त  words. Each noun in Sanskrit has 8 विभक्ति (cases). They are as follows:

प्रथमा (Prathamaa)

द्वितीया (Dwiteeyaa)

तृतीया (Triteeyaa)

चतुर्थी (Chaturthee)

पञ्चमी (Panchamee)

षष्ठी (SHaSHthee)

सप्तमी (Saptamee)

सम्बोधनम्  (Sambodhanam)

Again each noun has three वचन (Vachana). They are namely एकवचनम् (Ekvachanam Singular), द्विवचनम् (Dwivachanam Dual), and बहुवचनम् (Bahuvachanam Plural).

Let’s study an अकारान्त पुं. (Akaranta Masculine) word.

अकारान्त पुं. ‘देव’ शब्दः

एकवचनम्	द्विवचनम्	बहुवचनम्	विभक्तिः
देवः (Devahaa)	देवौ (Devau)	देवाः (Devaahaa)	प्रथमा
देवम् (Devam)	देवौ (Devau)	देवान् (Devaan)	द्वितीया
देवेन (Devena)	देवाभ्याम् (Devaabhyaam)	देवैः (Devaihi)	तृतीया
देवाय (Devaya)	देवाभ्याम् (Devaabhyaam)	देवेभ्यः (Devebhyahaa)	चतुर्थी
देवात् (Devat)	देवाभ्याम् (Devaabhyaam)	देवेभ्यः (Devebhyahaa)	पञ्चमी
देवस्य (Devasya)	देवयोः (Devayoho)	देवानाम् (Devaanaam)	षष्ठी
देवे (Deve)	देवयोः (Devayoho)	देवेषु (DeveSHu)	सप्तमी
हे देव (He Deva)	हे देवौ (He Davau)	हे देवाः (He Devaahaa)	सम्बोधनम्

द्विवचनम् (Dual form)

द्विवचनम्  is the specialty of Sanskrit. In many other languages, including English, nouns can have only two forms, i.e. singular and plural. The word ‘table’ means ‘a table’ and ‘tables’ means ‘many tables’. How do we say ‘two tables’? Unfortunately there is no particular word to say ‘two tables’. But this is possible in Sanskrit.

 Words!

Before we could construct actual sentences, we need to know many more things. We talked about vowels and consonants. When we use them in a proper order, we get words. How? Let’s have a quick look at it.

द् + ए + व् + अ = देव

म् + अ + ह् + ए + श् + अ = महेश

क् + अ + व् + इ + त् + आ = कविता

भ् + अ + ग् + अ + व् + आ + न् = भगवान्

न् + अ + द् + ई = नदी

If you carefully observe the above words, you will notice that although we find complete letters (consonants) in the words like देव, महेश, etc, they actually contain half letters like द्, व्, म्, ह्, श्, etc. It is only after adding vowels that we get complete letters.

Now let’s come to the last letter of each word. Try to find the ‘hidden’ last letter. The last letter in the word देव isn’t व, it is अ. The last letter in the word कविता isn’t ता, it is आ. If you don’t get this, read the above words once again.

            The last letter in every word is very important. We just saw that the last letter in the word देव is अ, so the word देव is called as अकारान्त (akaaraanta, meaning the word ending with ‘अ’). All the following words end with अ so they all are अकारान्त.

देश, राम, दन्त, नख, नर, असुर, दानव, पुण्य, पाप, केशव, गुण, दोष, जीवन, नयन

There are tens of thousands of such words. All the अकारान्त words are either masculine or neutral gender. How to identify them is indeed a difficult question for English people. This is because the rules are quite different. In English all humans are masculine or feminine. Not so with Sanskrit. Among the above words देश, राम, दन्त, नख, नर, असुर, दानव, केशव, गुण, दोष, etc are masculine and पुण्य, पाप, जीवन, नयन etc. are neutrals!  As per English rules देश (country), दन्त (tooth), नख (nail), पुण्य (good deed), पाप (sin), गुण (virtue), दोष (fault), जीवन (life), and नयन (eye), should have been neutral. This is because these are not human beings! This is why we use the pronoun ‘it’ instead of these words and not ‘he’. So we will have to remember which of the words are masculine, which are feminine and which are neutrals.

नमस्काराः! In the last article we made a beginning. Here is the second step in the same direction. In this article I am going to explain the vowels and consonants of Sanskrit. I will quote the pronunciation in brackets.

अ (a as in ultimate)

आ (aa)

इ (i as in India)

ई (ee as in East)

उ (u as in out)

ऊ (oo as in pool)

ए (e as in then)

ऐ (ai difficult to pronounce in English, similar to pine)

ओ (o as in go)

औ (ou again difficult to pronounce in English, similar to out)

अं (am as in umbrella) 

अः (ahaa)

ऋ (It is out of scope of English to pronounce ऋ. If you say ‘ru’, it will become ‘रू’, if you say ‘ri’ it would become ‘रि’. It is neither ‘ri’ nor ‘ru’. This is why the word कृष्ण is never pronounced correctly in English. Many people say ‘Krishna’ (क्रिष्ण) or ‘Krushna’ (क्रुष्ण))

ॠ (The deergha ऋ)

लृ (Again out of scope of English. I will try to upload audio clips in order to explain these pronunciations.)

ॡ (The deergha लृ)

These are the 16 vowels in Sanskrit.

Now, let us study the consonants.

क (k)    ख (kh) ग (g)     घ (gh)  ङ (ung as in sung)

च (ch as in chapter)     छ (chh)                        ज (j as in juggler)         झ (jh)   ञ (nch as in lunch)

ट (T as in put)  ठ (TH)  ड (D as in dog)            ढ (DH)  ण (N)

त (t)     थ (th as in thanks)       द (d as in the)  ध (dh as in this)                       न (n as in no)

प (p as in pen) फ (ph similar to ‘f’ as in friend, but putting both the lips together. I will explain this later.)       ब (b)     भ (bh)      म (m)

य (y)     र (r)      ल (l as in all)    व (w as in window)       श (sh)   ष (SH)  स (s)    ह (h as in hut)  ळ (L not possible to write in English)           क्ष (ksh)             ज्ञ (dny)

 Please note that certain vowels and consonants cannot be pronounced in English. I will try to upload audio clips to show the correct pronunciations, in future.

क्ष and ज्ञ are formed by combining two consonants. Similarly, many other consonants can be formed by combining other consonants.