Talk:Sanskrit verbs

Ten Ganas?
It would like to know what the ten Ganas are? I can't figure it out, and also it would be nice to know the relationship between the Ganas and the symbolic and stories of Ganesha (Ganapati).--Xact (talk) 06:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * A Gana seems to be the type of verb. I assume that it is equivalent to the following in French: (1) regular -er verbs, (2) -re verbs, (3) -oir verbs, (4) ... .  It means that there are 10 basic types of verbs which then presumably have their own pattern of conjugation. Lehasa (talk) 14:38, 27 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Gana or गण is a word which literally means a "group." It is the same word that goes into the formation of the word Ganapati or Ganesha (Lit. "Leader of the Group"). Different groups of verbs have root forms which get modified by attaching various vowels or consonants (eg. the first gets the schwa or A, the fourth gets Y, the fifth gets N, the tenth gets Aya, etc) prior to the final cap of specific endings like the -ed, -ing, -es, etc of English verbs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.36.25.199 (talk) 22:00, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The English term is 'class', now discussed in Sanskrit verbs. --RichardW57 (talk) 10:56, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

SRBIJA
Sanskrit je srodan srpskom!Sanskrit and serbian are one! Cp6uja! Be1luka Cp6uja!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.150.114.201 (talk • contribs) 19:54, 18 May 2007

It is quite evident it is similar to Serbian as they are both Indo-European, but don't do that anymore. You're not at all amusing.

And with your nationalistic comments you are very welcome to go a nationalistic version of a GreatSerbiPedia and post that kind of crap there. I don't like people doing that kind of stuff.

(For those who don't understand: "Sanskrit and Serbian are similar! [...] Serbia! Great Serbia!") Dear, does this annoy me. I signed the comment with his IP. Aljoša Avani 22:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Example improvements
"'Taking into account the fact that the participial forms each decline in seven cases in three numbers across three genders, and the fact that the verbs each conjugate in three persons in three numbers, the primary, causative, and desiderative stems for this root when counted together have over a thousand forms.'"

This needs to be explained PLEASE.
 * 1) Three numbers:  Do you mean singular, plural, and ___?  (yes. Dual)
 * 2) Three genders: Do you mean male, female, and neuter?
 * 3) Seven cases: please enumerate them

... okay, I am looking some of this stuff up and adding to the article.

Lehasa (talk) 14:35, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Reflexive?
This website (http://sanskrit.samskrutam.com/en.grammar-tutorial-reference-dhaaturupa.ashx) seems to say that at least some verbs have two forms depending on whether they are refering to the speaker (self) or to others (other). Is this correct? Is this mentioned in the main verb article or not? (If so, it is not very clear at all). Lehasa (talk) 14:58, 27 December 2014 (UTC)


 * @Lehasa Sanskrit verbs change form based on the subject (self, second person, third party human or object), tense, mood, active-passive nature of the sentence, or the gender of the subject & the tense & active-passive voice all together if they end up being used as participles (which happens A LOT). This article has plenty of issues with readability even for someone with at least a basic understanding of the subject. 49.36.25.199 (talk) 22:06, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Now briefly discussed under Sanskrit verbs, though it would be good to find a good description of how the Sanskrit voice worked. Of course, part of the answer is that it stopped working, and became a mere categorisation of forms. --RichardW57 (talk) 11:01, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

√ sign
I am a bit puzzled about the unexplained use of the mathematical √ sign here and other places on Wikipedia. I don't see it used any other places than on Wikipedia and Wiktionary. And I don't see any citations to explain its proper use. Is it something that has been made up by those who wrote on Wikipedia and Wiktionary, or, if not, can someone refer me to an authoritative explanation of what it means and whether is should really be the mathematical square root sign √? We have to remember this is an encyclopedia; we are not writing to professionals or scholars but to laymen, so stuff like this should be explained, for instance with a link to an article about it from the first use of the square root symbol on every page where it is used. --Jhertel (talk) 07:22, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The use of √ signifies the root of a verb or noun. This is a pretty standard usage in grammar textbooks and linguistics. Literally any textbook will include this usage, for example, Ruppel's introduction (to sanskrit) or Thomas Egenes. Javierfv1212 17:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * For some reason I didn't see this comment until now. Sorry about that. Thank you for your explanation. Regarding the "Literally any textbook will include this usage": My whole point was that we should not expect people to have read any form of linguistics or even having studied a language for them to be able to read an article here on Wikipedia. This is not like a class in university where we expect people to have done their homework or passed several prerequisite courses before they show up. On the contrary, we expect nothing of the kind; it's supposed to be written for laypersons without prior special knowledge. Important concepts will then be linked to, so the layperson can go read more about these, but at least we need to link to information that the average layperson cannot be expected to know. It can indeed be difficult for professionals, scholars, and others with prior knowledge to know what laypersons know and don't know, but in this case I came to the article as an otherwise well-educated layperson speaking two languages fluently, was taught 4, able to read 6, and I absolutely did not see that symbol out of a mathematical context before, so I needed the information in the article to be able to understand. Dyḗwsuh₃nus was so kind as to add it in a note (see below) which I now promoted to body text. --Jhertel (talk) 00:50, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * That's actually a very good point . I've now added a note to explain what it means as part of defining what roots are in Sanskrit. Thanks for the input. -Dyḗwsuh₃nus (talk) 22:25, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, ! I promoted your note to the body text, so it is clearly visible, as explained in the explanation of my edit. It's important that if the reader sees the root symbol, and don't understand it, they can scan or search the article from the top for that symbol to find what it means. I did remove the ", 'be'", though (I suppose you meant that the root '√bhu-' means 'be' in English?), as I found it slightly confusing and not important for the explanation, especially when promoted to body text. Thanks again for clarifying this. --Jhertel (talk) 00:25, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

"Aorist" system
I'm not sure whether this is because of a difference in nomenclature preferences or translation traditions, but from what I was taught when we learned Sanskrit grammar in English medium schools in India, the Aorist tense or "Paroksha Bhūt Kāla" (literally, "other-seen past tense") is used for actions in the distant past, especially things that the speaker/writer cannot claim to have witnessed or historical events that we only know based on the reports of other people. For example, my parents' wedding happened before I was born so I could describe it using the Aorist tense, but if I talk about things that happened after I was born but don't remember, I can use the Imperfect Past Tense which adds the prefix "a" (schwa sound). Ergo, this verb form is used most often in ancient literature referring to mythological events. "Jagāma" is the Aorist third person singular for the verb "gam" (to go) while the Imperfect Past tense equivalent is "agacchat." On this page, the "Imperfect" class in the "Present System" is the Imperfect Past Tense, while the "Perfect" system section speaks about what we were taught as the Aorist. Now, the labels we used seem to be consistent with the way Aorist has been described in the main Wiki page as a completely different verb form with its own special significance (I'm not a grammarian and my only real life usage of the Aorist has been restricted to when we would talk about the Sanskirt verb tense) and the commentary on that page about its usage in Sanskrit specifically being more frequent in older literature is also in alignment. The example declension tables for the Aorist provided here follow the rules for the Imperfect Past Tense with minor deviations that can easily be explained by the idiosyncrasies of the verb class with some vriddhi similar to the "-sya Future Tense" (that's what we called it; it's been labelled the "Simple Future stem" here). The Aorist and the Imperfect Past tense should ideally both be classified under "Past" if the page is divided based on tenses.

Considering that no sources have been cited for the verb tables and there is no section for the Past Tense (or "System" to be consistent with the terminology used in the page), I think it's necessary for one of the more experienced Wikipedians who have contributed to this page to 1) cite their sources for the definitions and terminology, 2) compare notes with different schools of grammar (or actual language textbooks for students who are learning to use the language, not historically oriented books by linguists or Orientalists; the Talk section already has questions that suggest such a practically oriented framing would be aligned with most readers' expectations) to achieve some sort of consistency because grammar is complex enough as it is without having to decide on how to translate terms across languages (for clarity, it would be simpler to include the native terms alongside the English terminology & simple descriptions; a source such as this or this can provide the terminology that is still used by Indians who study the language because it's way simpler than trying to find equivalent grammatical terms in whatever language we're using to talk; both the linked sources should open on a table/list of forms for the root Bhū, similar to the "Comprehensive Example" table for the same verb provided on this page, so it can be a great aid to anyone who feels like they may be able to do this consistency check) and 3) move the tables for the Imperfect Past Tense and the Aorist to a separate section for the Past tense on the same level as the Present and Future "Systems."

Point 3 seems the most important because as it stands, this page seems to imply that Sanskrit has no way to describe actions in the past except by using participles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:201:22:C047:1408:78A9:3376:B15D (talk) 19:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)