How long does it take to learn Sanskrit fluently?
Sanskrit is a classical language of South Asia belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.
Language learning is a process that does not happen overnight nor in a fortnight.
Even linguists or people who know how to speak more than two languages aside from their native tongue have to spend not less than two years to master one language.
Purpose of learning Sanskrit:
- Depends on what purpose you wish to find out. If you wish to grasp Sanskrit just like the Vedas and the Upanishads then it’d take an excellent deal of your time, 3-4 months or even a year or 2 for deep learning. However, if you wish to find out to merely have a conversation and understand the fundamentals, then you’ll succeed in acquiring the language in barely 2-3 weeks.
Prior knowledge:
- If you have a hold of any other language, mainly any language from Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, it would be comparatively quicker to grasp Sanskrit. With this in two to three weeks you’ll be decent in it, can read stuff like simple prose and around 1.5–3 years, learning will be more or less like a great 2nd mother tongue and perfect speech and readability can comprehend poems with relative ease.
Therefore, to ask how long does it take to learn a language fluently is such a big question.
The answer depends on various factors that vary from person to person.