REET Level 1 study notes
Sanskrit Alphabet and Sandhi for REET L1 Teachers
Sanskrit varnamala counts 13 vowels and 33 consonants, while anusvara and visarga are ayogavaha outside the count. Vowels are taught by duration as ह्रस्व, दीर्घ and प्लुत, and consonants by place of articulation: कण्ठ, तालु, मूर्धा, दन्त and ओष्ठ. Sandhi is the rule-governed joining of sounds at word boundaries; primary learners recognize स्वर-सन्धि families such as दीर्घ, गुण, वृद्धि, यण् and अयादि, then use a four-step sandhi-vichchheda diagnosis: last sound, first sound, family and rule.
Key points
- Sanskrit varnamala has 13 vowels (5 hrsva, 4 dirgha, 4 sandhyakshara) and 33 consonants (25 sparsha in five vargas, 4 antastha, 4 ushma); anusvara and visarga are ayogavaha and stand outside the count.
- Vowel duration is hrsva (1 matra), dirgha (2 matra) and pluta (3 matra), and the matra count is the seed of dirgha-sandhi where homogeneous long vowels combine into a single long vowel.
- Stop consonants are taught by uchcharan-sthan — kanth, talu, murdha, dant, osth — and asking learners to feel each place with their hand carries the rule into pronunciation memory at the L1 level.
- Svar-sandhi has five named families — dirgha, gun, vriddhi, yan and ayadi — taught with classroom examples like vidyalaya, narendra, suryodaya, ityaadi and devarshi.
- Sandhi-vichchheda follows a fixed four-step diagnosis at primary level — identify last varna, identify first varna, classify family, apply rule — and skipping the diagnosis is the largest single source of wrong answers in Class V notebooks.
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Sanskrit varnamala counts 13 vowels and 33 consonants, while anusvara and visarga are ayogavaha outside the count. Vowels are taught by duration as ह्रस्व, दीर्घ and प्लुत, and consonants by place of articulation: कण्ठ, तालु, मूर्धा, दन्त and ओष्ठ. Sandhi is the rule-governed joining of sounds at word boundaries; primary learners recognize स्वर-सन्धि families such as दीर्घ, गुण, वृद्धि, यण् and अयादि, then use a four-step...