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. 

The duration, required to learn the language, depends on the purpose of learning the language. If you wish to learn the ancient traditional scriptures and texts, then it’ll take around 6 – 8 months to 1 or maybe 2  years. Whereas, if you wish to learn only spoken parts then it’ll take you around 3-4 months.

If you are interested in learning the language, a few are some of the important questions that one should ask oneself to know how long it might take to learn it.

The decision on how many hours you can actually dedicate in a day may decide how much you will learn in the decided time. You can allot the time for learning but yes your time allotment for this goal will absolutely have a huge impact on your speed in learning the language. 

Ask yourself, would you be using the Sanskrit language while communicating with other people. With more continuous practice, you can expect to feel more natural about using the language as well as in understanding it without having to look up in the dictionary for each and every word.

If you are a beginner, definitely, you will need guidance and some advice on how to do it correctly especially with the pronunciation and complex words.

At Multibhashi, we offer trained tutoring to trainees through online lessons. For a better understanding of the language, you can rely on us.

Also, along with the above-discussed factors, there are other factors that decide how long it would take to learn the Sanskrit language fluently.

If we place individual learning capability aside, needless to say, that anyone who can learn the other language will learn Sanskrit and that learning Sanskrit doesn’t have to be compelled to be tougher than learning the other language – on the condition that we have a tendency to learn in a natural means that permits us to assimilate the live flow of the language.

So all we have to do in order to make Sanskrit learning easy and fun is to adjust our approach by paying attention to the natural way our mind learns new things. In addition to this, we should be aware of our objective to learn Sanskrit, which in turn will decide the duration you will take to learn Sanskrit fluently. Let’s discuss them here:

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.

Set up of learning:

Your learning strategies play a vital role in how fluently you learn Sanskrit. If your learning is restricted to a room setting, then it’ll most likely take you longer to learn the same. If, however, you are exposed to Sanskrit outside the classroom setup, then you’ll curtail the time required to learn it. Reading, being attentive to the audios, speaking, all will facilitate your learning speed.

So all we’ve to do is to try to create Sanskrit learning straightforward and fun. Numerous aspects of learning ought to be emphasized and given priority within the proper time and in a proper manner.

So aim, plan and start learning.

All the best!!!