Amarahasa, buddhaḥ - 1 buddhaḥ kaḥ? - 1 buddhō bhikṣuḥ (Patreon)

Namō namaḥ! Greetings! I have begun to learn Sanskrit, and I am using the wonderful free Comprehensible Input website Amarahasa ( https://en.amarahasa.com/start-here/ ).

The website consists of very easy stories, which one can display either in Roman letter transcription or in the Dēvanāgarī. I recommend reading the Roman transcription to start with, and then listen to the same while reading the Dēvanāgarī; but work to wean yourself off the Roman transcription as soon as you can!

On the website, you can click on any word for the translation and other information.

Pronunciation

I am attempting to use a reconstructed pronunciation of early Classical Sanskrit circa 6cBC (contemporary with Pāṇini the grammarian). My reconstruction differs from the usual academic and traditional modern Indian pronunciation in two respects: the final -ḥ consonant, which is more commonly uttered as syllabic [ɦɐ], I instead render as asyllabic [h]. This consonant is derived from final -s in Proto-Indo-European; for example, Sanskrit final -aḥ usually corresponds to Ancient Greek -ος and Latin -us.

स्वप्नः (svápnaḥ) = ὕπνος = somnus

Additionally, I am attempting to render what I understand of the pitch accent. While Vedic Sanskrit preserves the Proto-Indo-European pitch accent, as in Ancient Greek, some scholars aren't sure if it survived into Classical Sanskrit, while others think it did. Nevertheless, I would like to learn the etymological pitch accent where it occurs, so I am adding it on any word whose Vedic accent I can find. (I do this by copying and pasting the Sanskrit word in Dēvanāgarī into Wiktionary, and then pronounce the pitch accent if it's available.)

My understanding of Sanskrit phonology, and the language as a whole, is quite primitive at this point, and no doubt others can do much better than what you hear in these recordings. Nevertheless, I find this exercise extremely useful, and I hope the audio recordings serve as a complement to your Sanskrit studies.