Spoken Sanskrit Workshops - Participant Testimonials

DESI and Samskrita-Bharati organized two spoken Sanskrit workshops – one at the Sri Shiva Vishnu Temple (SSVT) during the February 25-26 weekend and another at South Riding VA during the March 11-12 weekend. Pictures and google videos are available at http://www.sitekreator.com/desiumd/sanskrit.html and more details are available at http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/desi/sanskrit

What best could summarize the mood of the workshop than testimonials from some of the workshop attendees. So here goes.

Workshop 1

Srilatha Kuntumalla: The Sanskrit workshop was first of all, a lot of fun. Although I had not learnt Sanskrit before, I had hardly any problems understanding spoken Sanskrit in the workshop. This was largely in part to Mr. Rajesh Rachabattuni’s (Samskrita-Bharati) method of teaching spoken Sanskrit which involved explaining in different ways along with a lot of gestures. The best part of the workshop for me was that we also formed a drama group to present popular Hindi movie scenes and songs in Sanskrit. At the end of the workshop, I not only had success with being able to converse in a few simple sentences of Sanskrit, but also came away with the enthusiasm to continue to attend more workshops to further my knowledge of spoken Sanskrit.

Wayne Menezes: I really liked Rajesh ji’s (Samskrita-Bharati) method of using non-verbal cues to explain the meanings of samskritam words and requiring little direct translation into English or Hindi. I didn’t think I would really be able to speak complete sentences in samskritam within two days of the workshop and it greatly exceeded my expectations.

Shriram Ilavajhala: The Samskrita Shibiram weekend was one of the best weekends I ever had. Quite frankly, when I heard about this two day Samskritam weekend, I thought this will be as boring as the one that I attended when I was five. It turned out to be one of the best weekends that I had ever spent! In two days, we learned to speak the basics, wrote a story entirely in Samskritam, performed a skit (video is on google), and shared many jokes and stories. The crowd was quite enthusiastic all through out and we are even thinking of starting a weekend study/discussion group. I am quite interested in learning Samskritam further. Especially, I am thrilled to see how close this language is to Russian in many ways.

Ritaja Sur: 3-4 years of sanskrit classes didnt help me as much as the two day workshop did. Rajeshji made learning sanskrit so much easier. I really enjoyed every minute of the class.

Workshop 2

Sandeep Somani: An excellent beginner workshop to get a feel for the language. I agree with the approach of Listen-Speak-Read-Write to learn a language. Instructor Rajeshji conducted the course very effectively.This was my first exposure to Samskrit Bharati. I feel they are doing a great service.

Madhuri Subbiah: The samaskritam workshop was an edifying experience for me. Rajesh ji's teaching skill needs to be appreciated. He was handling students with different levels of samskritam knowledge yet he reached everyone one of us. I can say nothing about the way i feel except that i had been so lucky in attending this workshop, i thank Rajesh ji and also all those who made this happen....

Ravi Rajagopal: (Note: He came all the way from NJ to VA and stayed overnight on Saturday) I had previously attended 10 sessions of samskritam workshops (not SB), and checked out a lotof books was but very disappointed. This is the best ever, gave me a head start, now I can go on. The inter activeness of the class really helped.

Vasant Malshet: I tried reading thru 10 volumes of another "learn samskritam" course, gave up after two volumes. This workshop has given me a huge head start.

Anupama Ramachandran: The interaction really created a bond among the participants

Amuthan Kannan: Wonderful, I like this immersion type of teaching. Very good idea to imbibe the knowledge this way.