Way back in high school, like most American kids, I had to study things like Spanish, French, etc. I took German for two years in high school, but I didn’t find it very interesting, and I didn’t like my teacher very much. So, I never put in much effort. Later, one of my friends told me that we offered Mandarin Chinese at my high school, and I was just beginning my “teenage weeb phase”, so I was definitely curious.1
Our teacher, Mrs. Wu, was a very nice elderly teacher, even though she was in over her head dealing with a bunch of teenagers. Still, exploring something exotic like Chinese language really interested 16-year old me, and I was a pretty motivated student. I tried to learn both Traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan) and Simplified characters (Chinese mainland). My best friend at the time was Taiwanese-American, and I used to practice with his immigrant parents.
Anyhow, long story short, once I got into college, I focused on other priorities, and gradually, I forgot my Chinese studies.
Lately, I have been dabbling in Duolingo and learning Chinese again. I forget why, but I guess it’s partly fueled by nostalgia, but also because I already know how to read many Chinese characters through my studies of Japanese.
It’s been fascinating to see how Japanese kanji (Japanese-imported Chinese characters), and modern Chinese characters overlap and yet differ. The important thing to bear in mind is that Japan (like other neighboring countries), imported Chinese characters at an earlier stage in history, and over centuries the usage, pronuncaition and such have all diverged.
Take this easy sentence in Chinese:
All of these Chinese characters are used in Japanese, and without any prompts, I can read this and get the gist of what its saying, but there’s some notable divergences.
These Chinese sentence above is:
日本菜和中国菜 rì běn caì hé zhōng guó caì
A Japanese equivalent might be:
日本料理と中国料理 nihon ryōri to chūgoku ryōri
A few interesting things to note.
The character 菜 is used in modern Chinese to mean food in general, but in Japanese it means vegetables. So the usage has diverged. I noticed that Chinese
The country names, 中国 and 日本 are used by both languages, but the pronunciation has also diverged considerably. 中国 is pronounced zhōng guó in Chinese, and chūgoku in Japanese. You can kind of hear the similarities, but also the pronunciation has diverged for centuries.
The character 和 (hé) is used in Chinese to mean “and”, but in Japanese a system of particles is used instead. Interestingly, 和 is used in Japanese, for example the old name of Japan was Yamato (大和) or modern words like heiwa (平和, “peace”). The pronunciation is wa, so it has diverged as well.
On thing I haven’t really delved into is the native Japanese readings for Chinese characters. Chinese characters are a foreign, imported writing system to Japan, so native words sound completely different even when written with Chinese characters. The word for 中国 (chūgoku) derives from Chinese, but 中 by itself is pronounced as naka (“middle”) which is a native Japanese word (not imported).
Anyhow, this is just a quick overview of how two entirely different languages both adopted the same writing system, but have diverged over time. If you add in languages like Vietnamese and Korean that also adopted Chinese characters, the picture is even more fascinating.
P.S. Through Duolingo, I learned that the Chinese word for hamburger is hàn-bǎo-bāo.
Chinese has to import foreign words using Chinese characters that at least kind of sound like the original. Japanese uses a second syllabary system, katakana, to approximate the same thing, although in the past Chinese characters were used as well. Hence, America is usually written as amerika アメリカ, but in more formal settings it is called beikoku 米国 (compare the pronunciation with Chinese měi guó).
1 The fact that my high school even offered Chinese language at that time (1990’s America) is pretty unusual, but I am grateful for the option. Also, thank you Mrs Wu if you ever happen to read this.
In our last episode, we talked about some basic, fundamental particles used in the Japanese language. Today, we’ll cover some other, essential particles: “ni” に, “de” で, “yo” よ, and “ne” ね. The first two are often required for parts of speech, but the second two are often used to provide “flavor” or “nuance” to conversation. All of them are frequently used, and necessary to speak Japanese well.
As with the previous post, this post assumes you know how to read hiragana script. If not, now would be a good time to review. Kanji will be kept to a minimum for now.
The targeting particle: に
The particle に (ni) is used in many ways in Japanese, but it’s best to think of it as a particle that provides a target for a verb. Credit goes to Tae Kim for coming up with this explanation.
The に particle is not used for direct objects. As we saw in the last post, the を (wo) particle fulfills that role.
たなかさんにCDをあげた。
I gave Mr Takana the CD
Instead, the に (ni) particle is used when a verb relates to something, but not as a direct objection. A couple examples:
へやにはいる。
To go into a room
also:
でんしゃにおりる。
To get off a train
In both cases, a verb relates to a noun, but it’s not directly doing something to the noun. The に particle simply specifies the targets of the verb. A lot of verbs in Japanese are intransitive verbs, more so than English, so they won’t take direct objects anyway, and in such cases, に is often used.
You can also target time with a verb:
くじにでる。
I will leave at 9 o’clock
One other important note: に is also used in passive speech to designate the agent of the passive action (e.g. “it was done by who”). I still consider this a target, but that’s just me.
たなかさんにすしをたべられた。
The sushi was eaten by Mr Tanaka
The context particle: で
This is another very useful particle. The で (de) particle is used to explain context for things. This includes:
Where something took place.
Something was done with something.
Something will take place within a time frame.
It’s hard to explain, but pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.
がっこうでごはんをたべた。
I ate lunch (lit. meal) at school
Or:
フライパンでつくった。
[I] cooked with a frypan
Another often overlooked example is:
レゴであそんだ。
[We] played with legos.
And finally for time:
ごふんでつく。
[we will] arrive in five minutes.
The assertive particle: よ
The よ (yo) and ね (ne) particle below are both “nuance” particles. They are not used for parts of speech like many of the particles we’ve seen so far. Instead, these particles are put at the end of sentences to provide nuance to a sentence.
The よ (yo) particle is used to assert something. This is often done to either:
Present new information, or
Make a point
As with any culture, if you are too assertive, this can annoy other people, but there are many times this is used in Japanese without sounding rude or overly assertive.
Let’s compare these two sentences:
きょうはさむい。
Today is cold.
with:
きょうはさむいよ。
Today is cold.
When translating to English, the meaning is the same. However, the nuance is different. The first sentence is matter of fact, with no nuance. The second sentence assumes that the listener either didn’t know it was cold, or that you are trying to remind the listener that it is cold (therefore you should dress warm).
The soliciting particle: ね
As with the よ (yo) particle, the ね (ne) particle expresses nuance only, but tends to convey something different. Where よ (yo) asserts something, the ね (ne) particle solicits feedback from the listener. This is often used in Japanese language to either solicit agreement from others, but also to downplay one’s opinion (e.g. soften it), thereby making it a bit more polite.
Using the example sentence above, let’s change the nuance a bit:
きょうはさむいね。
Today is cold [don’t you think?].
Here, the speaker is making a point, but doing it in a more solicitous way, hoping to garner agreement with the listener. This is obviously less assertive, and more conciliatory to the listener.
It’s very common to also combine the two to both assert something, but not too strongly:
きょうはさむいよね。
Today is cold [don’t you think?].
You’re still asserting something information, but also pulling back a bit too, so it’s often a happy medium in conversation.
Conclusion
There are a lot more particles in Japanese language, and we haven’t covered all use-cases of these particles either, but even knowing this much gives you a solid foundation, once the usage sinks in. The best way to learn particle usage isn’t memorizing grammar, but instead learning sentence patterns, preferably from real Japanese media (books, TV, etc). Once you’ve seen a sentence pattern 50 times, you can generally get the gist of it. If you’ve seen it 500 times, you probably are pretty familiar with it. 😙
I am the sort of person who is bad with names. I recently met some new neighbors, and they told me their names, and I made a point of remembering those names, but 5 minutes later, I had already forgotten one of them.
In the early Buddhist sutras, the Buddha described the mind as a monkey flitting from branch to branch:
Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. In the same way, what’s called ‘mind,’ ‘intellect,’ or ‘consciousness’ by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.
Assutavā Sutta (SN 12.61), translation by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu
This inability to focus the mind prevents us from gaining any insight, being easily swayed by sensual lust, anger, or ignorance, unable to see the bigger picture. Centuries later, in the Parable of the Burning House of the Lotus Sutra, the kids in the burning house are so distracted by their toys, that they do not notice their father calling them to get out.
This notion of the unstable mind unable to see its own peril is found in every Buddhist tradition, and what drives much of the Buddhist practice. Recognizing one’s own mental patterns is the first step, an important one too, but another important step is to counteract this. One cannot stop the thoughts themselves, it’s just the way the mind of Homo sapiens works. Instead, one should look into Buddhist training to either withstand such thoughts, counteract them, or look past them. This isn’t a simple thing either. It’s quite difficult, and requires long-term training. But it is essential to one’s well-being.
When I catch myself brooding angry thoughts, or thinking something stupid and selfish, I often think about something Honen said in a famous catechism called the 145 Questions and Answers (ippyaku-shijūgo-kajō-mond, 百四十五箇条問答), namely question #69:
一。心に妄念のいかにも思はれ候は、いかがし候べき。
Q) When bad thoughts keep arising within my mind, what ought one to do?
Because the Pure Land tradition of Buddhism is so large, there’s a lot of ways to interpret this. I don’t know the right answer. You should do your own research and decide for yourself. For some, this is using the nembutsu as a form of mindfulness practice (withstanding evil thoughts), while for others, this is acknowledging the grace of Amida Buddha, and that one is still destined to be reborn in the Pure Land (looking past evil thoughts).
This is not to replace the tradition of mindfulness meditation, either. It’s just not always possible to be sitting on a cushion meditating, so remembering Honen’s advice is a handy thing to do when you are going through life, and feeling your mind looping the same negative or unwholesome thoughts over and over.
Japanese, as a language, isn’t really all that hard to learn, especially if you know the Golden Rules, but compared to English, it’s quite different. This means that you have to unlearn English ways of expressing things, and start from the ground-up. A good place to start is to learn the common particles used in Japanese.
I’ve touched on particles before, but in the following two posts, we’ll cover the most common particles in more detail. This post assumes you know how to read hiragana script. If not, now would be a good time to review. I will try to keep kanji to a minimum for now.
Particles in Japanese are small, 1 to 2 syllable markers. There is no direct, one-to-one translation to English, but they’re important for marking parts of speech. This means that you can’t make sense of a sentence in Japanese without knowing particles. Further, you cannot communicate clearly to native speakers without using the correct particles.
For today we’ll focus on “ga” が, “no” の, “wo” を and “desu” です.
When to Use What Particle
Japanese is known for being a “pithy” language, and this is true. Japanese only uses the parts of speech that need to be explicitly mentioned, while the rest is implied by context. English does this too, but not as much. Thus, English speakers of Japanese often sound wordy, and this gets tiring to a native Japanese speaker.
For example if introducing yourself, a common mistake English speakers make is something like this:
わたしのなまえはまつだです。
“Hello, my name is Matsuda”
This isn’t grammatically wrong, just needlessly wordy. Oftentimes, Japanese speakers might simply say:
まつだです。
“[I am] Matsuda.”
Therefore, we’ll try to focus on the most essential, basic particles first. This will be enough to complete basic sentences in most cases.
The noun-linking particle: の
The の “no” particle has several uses, but at its heart, it’s meant to link two nouns together. This can have different nuances depending on context. A common example to just mark possession of something:
まつだのほん
Matsuda’s book
You can pretty much link any two nouns this way:
にほんのじょせい
Japanese women
This also lets you do something called apposition, which means using one noun introduce another:
せんせいのたけださん
Mr (or Miss) Takeda, the teacher
Or time, using なんじ (“what time”?)
なんじのでんしゃ？
What time is the train?
and answer:
さんじのでんしゃ
The 3 O’Clock Train
It has other uses as well, but this covers plenty. The の is super useful, but takes a bit of time to get used to the different nuances.
The subject particle: が
The particle が is one of the most basic and most useful to learn first. Its job is to answer the questions “who”, “what”, “which” or “where”: who does something, which thing is which, where is something?
For example, if the word だれ means “who”, you can ask:
だれがせんせい？
Who’s the teacher?
Which you can answer:
たけだがせんせい。
Takeda is the teacher.
Notice that が is used both to ask “who”, but also answer “who”.
Another example using なに (“what”?)
なにがたべたい？
What do you want to eat?
and the answer:
すしがたべたい
I want to eat sushi
Particle を
The を “wo” particle is interesting because it represents a hiragana letter that no longer is used, and really has only one usage left: marking the direct object of a sentence.
すしをたべる。
I eat sushi
Note that this only works for transitive verbs, verbs that take direct objects. Which verbs are transitive vs intransitive is not always the same as English. You just have to know, and often they come in pairs in Japanese.
The polite particle: です
The particle です is somewhat hard to explain, but in essence, it just makes sentences more polite. You can use it in one of two ways.
One way is to simply append to last noun or adjective, and make it polite:
さむいです。
“It’s cold”
Another way to use it is to replace the last particle + verb, while keeping it polite.
なにがたべたい？
すしがたべたい。 = すしです。
Conclusion
Particles in Japanese are used in a variety of ways, and nuances, that are hard to translate 1:1 into English, but once you get used to the patterns, it’s not difficult to grasp. The key is to unlearn habits in your home language, and just get used to the basic patterns on their own merits until it becomes second nature.
In part two, we’ll explore more particles and see where we go from there.
I had expected to fail listening more so than reading, the listening section was very stressful, and yet the reading section felt somewhat easy. Clearly, I underestimated things. After reading about people online who passed or failed the JLPT N1, it’s clear that the N1 assumes full adult literacy. If you can’t read a novel or two in Japanese, you will not pass the reading section. I haven’t reached that level yet, and the results aren’t that surprising then.
That said, the total score to pass has to be 100 out of 180, so even if I passed the reading section, my overall score was still pretty low, and probably not enough to pass.
Needless to say, it was a good effort, but my preparations all around were insufficient.
Will I take it again? This took considerable time, effort and willingness to go the distance, and so I have to think about whether I want to try again. Since I don’t need the JLPT N1 for work, it’s more of a personal project, and may or may not be worth the cost.
Hello dear readers, and happy new year, or as they say in Japan akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!
My family and I took time off for Winter Break and are probably more exhausted now than when the break began.
After enjoying New Year’s Eve with friends, we woke up this morning to eat Osechi (お節), which are traditional foods eaten in Japan for New Year for good luck. This is just one of many traditions found in Japanese New Year, also called oshougatsu (お正月).
I won’t list each one, but you can read here. These are foods thought to have auspicious meanings, and include things like shrimp, black beans, candied fish, chestnuts and so on. I like some more than others, but I try to have a bite of at least one of each. I like the pink and white kamaboko in particular. This year, we bought a brand that has the Chinese character 寿 (kotobuki) in it, meaning “felicitations” and such. The featured photo shows the Chinese character in reverse.
Also, in the photo above, our little ceremonial dishes feature the Seven Luck Gods too, and in the ozouni soup shown the naruto fish cakes feature Mount Fuji in front of a sunrise.
Later today, I will probably play some Karuta and then head for the local Japanese Buddhist temple for the first visit of the year, hatsumoude, and post on that soon.
Happy 2024 to everyone!
P.S. For us Star Trek fans, another thing to may be look forward to this year:
So, I took the JLPT N1 exam last weekend, and unless I got lucky, I am fairly certain I failed the test.
Wait, you might be thinking, didn’t I give up on the test this year?
Well, yes and no.
I did become discouraged and stopped studying for a few months. But after spending the summer in Japan, I realized how much I enjoyed studying Japanese, and I felt that if I put off the test for another year, I’d just keep procrastinating my test preparation. It made sense to press the issue by registering to take the exam. This was kind of a last minute decision, and with all the personal chaos happening in fall, I neglected to mention it in the blog.
The problem is that even though I work better with a deadline than without, the reality of parenting, work, and Fire Emblem got in the way, and I made less progress in my preparation than I would have liked. I spent a lot of time reading, and did some mock tests for the reading section, and that did help.1 However, it was clear that my vocabulary and listening skills were still insufficient. I banked too much on just reading essays.
When you look at online discussions, it’s clear that by the time you get to the N1, you need to have a general adult-level literacy in Japanese, including listening. People who read and watch Japanese media in general tend to fare a lot better. I have done some of this over the last two years, but clearly not enough.
That said, it wasn’t a complete failure. I definitely could see that my study and reading skills had helped, and there were questions I could answer comfortably without much effort. So, it’s not a question of study method, so much as time put in. I need to do more of the same, and probably on a more frequent basis. Listening, as always, is the hardest skill, but now I have a fresh baseline in my mind, so I know what level of conversation or content I should focus on. As with reading, I have plenty of books at home to finish, but I will try to broaden my subjects to more than just the 2-3 things I like to read (Buddhism and the Hyakunin Isshu). I can assure you that neither subject appeared on the test. 😉
Amen, Mercedes. Amen.
Assuming I don’t pass this time, which is likely, I feel positive enough about my progress that I will likely try again next year. I will not commit to anything just yet, at least until I’ve had a chance to see my test score next month or so.
Until then, I’m just taking a much needed break, focusing on playing karuta and of course more Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
1 I was able to manage my time pretty well during the reading section, pacing myself, and even had a bit of time to go back, review, and fix a couple questions. The last time I took the exam, I was definitely rushed, and did poorly in the reading section.
This is another reference post. I noticed that one of my most popular posts is the entry on a Buddhist chant called the Mantra of Light, and there’s multiple ways to read and recite it depending on what language you choose. Anyhow, it made me realize that there’s a big knowledge gap about Sanskrit in a specifically Buddhist context. There’s plenty of Sanskrit language resources out there, but they’re focused on Hinduism, and Hindu-related literature. Even the writing system used in language textbooks, Devanagari, tends to assume certain things.
Sanskrit is a language that’s used in a variety of contexts, and religious traditions, including Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism.
As a language, it is way too big to cover in this blog, and I am just a novice, but I wanted to provide some real, fundamental basics of how Sanskrit works, with an emphasis on Buddhism.
What is Sanskrit?
Sanskrit is a very old language still widely used in some contexts. It is related to Greek and Latin, among other things, but mostly as a distant cousin. The Arya people who come into northwest India spoke it natively, and then as they took over north India, they imposed their language on people there.
Just as Latin eventually morphed into languages like Spanish, French, and Italian (among others), or influenced languages such as English, German or Russian, Sanskrit followed a similar trajectory. Languages descended from Sanskrit are called Prakrits. Prakrits were the colloquial forms of Sanskrit, each with regional differences, while Sanskrit remained the “high” language, increasingly relegated to things like religious ceremonies or literature.
Why Sanskrit and Buddhism?
The historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, did not use Sanskrit when teaching his disciples. His native language was probably Magadhi (still spoken today), but he often used Pāli when speaking to others since it was so widely known. Both Magadhi and Pāli are prakrits, descended from Sanskrit.
Since Pāli was such a popular language, it was how most early Buddhist sermons were memorized and passed down to future generations. Some Buddhist traditions, especially Theravada Buddhism, preserve these sermons using Pāli.
However, as Buddhism spread northward along the Silk Road, it was recorded in yet more prakrits such as Gandhari (Pakistan area), and such, not Pāli. By this point, there were Buddhist texts preserved in all sorts of local prakrits, not necessarily Pāli, and it probably became unmanageable.
The early Mahayana Buddhists started converting texts and teachings to Sanskrit instead. While Sanskrit wasn’t a common, spoken language, it was something that everyone more or less knew, just as medieval writers in Europe all knew at least some Latin. Thus as the layers of literature built up over time, and especially outside the core areas of India, it made more and more sense to just use Sanskrit for everything. Their Sanskrit wasn’t always “pure” Sanskrit, but it was good enough.
The featured image above is of the temple of Sensoji, better known as Asakusa Temple, in Tokyo, Japan. The central altar has the Sanskrit letter “sa” for satyam (truth) prominently displayed using Siddham script. Thus, even in a place like Japan, Sanskrit is still being used.
What Writing System Does Sanskrit Use?
This is a surprisingly hard question to answer. Unlike some languages, like Greek or Chinese, it had no fixed writing system. Every knew at least some Sanskrit, but everyone wrote it down in their own way. The Pillars of Ashoka used the Brahmi script to convey Buddhist teachings to the masses, while Buddhist texts on the Silk Road were often recorded in Karoshthi, and Buddhist mantras were recorded in Siddham.
So, what writing system should Sanskrit be written in? Whatever conveys it best to the reader.
For the purposes of this blog article, we’ll stick with the Roman Alphabet, with extended diacritics. For Buddhists, there is no benefit to using modern Devanagari, since early Buddhists didn’t even use it, and it’s just an extra layer to learn. Just don’t bother. The Roman Alphabet is sufficient for Western audiences.
Sanskrit Alphabet
The Sanskrit alphabet (regardless of what script you use) is broader than English because each sound has its own letter (sometimes two), and thanks to the grammarian Pāṇini, it’s all carefully organized in a sensible system.
Many of these sounds exist in English, but do not have their own letter to distinguish them; we just pronounce them automatically. Some sounds definitely do not exist in English and require extra care.
We can’t cover all these letters in detail here, especially pronunciation. There are some excellent pronunciation guides like the video series below. While it’s a Hare Krishna channel, not a Buddhist one, the explanations are excellent and clear.
A notes worth calling out here though:
ḥ – this is like a “breathy” h-sound that shows up at the end of certain words.
ṃ – although it looks like an “m”, it sounds more like an “ng” sound as in running. In the Buddhist tradition of praising the three treasures, the phrase Buddhaṃ Saranaṃ Gacchāmi, it is pronounced like “boo-dang” not “boo-dam”.
Sanskrit distinguishes between letters like k and kh, g and gh, d and dh and so on. These are separate letters in Sanskrit. Letters with an “h” are pronounced with a puff of air. Think of the English word redhead. That’s a fairly close analogy to “dh”. Similarly, egghead, for “gh”, dickhead for “kh” and so on. Not very civilized, but it works. 😆. Thus, Buddha, can be broken down to letters bu-d-dh-a, where “dh” sounds like redhead.
Side note: the ph in Sanskrit is not an “f” sound. This confused me a lot when I looked at works like “phalam” (fruit). It’s a breathier “p” sound.
ś and ṣ are both like the English sound “sh”. A common example in Buddhism is the word Śastra, which is a kind of important treatise. This is pronounced like “shastra”, not “sastra”. I am not 100% sure how ś and ṣ differ, but for practical purposes they’re more or less the same.
ñ – Just like Spanish in words like El Niño.
The letters ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh and ṇ (the ones with a dot beneath them) are extra difficult to pronounce for English speakers since we don’t really have “retroflex” sounds (sounds where the tongue touches the roof of the mouth). Thankfully these don’t come up too often in Buddhist Sanskrit.
r – a nice rolled “r” sound like in Spanish, Latin, etc, not the American “r” sound.
v – This one is confusing, but the “v” is actually pronounced like a “w” sound. The aforementioned “Bodhisattva” is correctly pronounced like “Bodhisattwa”.
This not a complete summary, but will hopefully address some pitfalls. Let’s look at vowels too.
Vowels in Sanskrit are fairly straightforward, but with a few caveats worth noting:
Sanskrit vowels are distinguished by “short” and “long” sounds. As with the consonants, each one has its own letter to distinguish it, unlike English “o” which can be pronounced multiple ways. The video series I linked above shows vowel pronunciations as well. Just remembere that long and short vowels might look similar in the Roman alphabet, but they are distinct letters.
a is the default sound that’s used when there is no other vowel explicitly used. It sounds like “uh” as in “duh” not as in “father”; that’s the letter ā instead.
Sanskrit has a vowel ṛ that doesn’t really exist in English. Imagine the English word “rip”, remove the ending “p” and roll the “r”. That’s ṛ. Even the Sanskirt word for Sanskrit, saṃskṛta, uses ṛ instead of an i. Usually in English people transliterate this as “ri” instead of “ṛ”, but be aware that this is its own vowel. Also note that r is a consonant, and ṛ is a vowel. They are not the same.
The au sound is like English “ow”, not “aw”. Imagine hitting your head on the door-frame. That’s “au”.
The ai sound like the same as “yipe!”. Imagine touching a hot pan. That’s the “ai!” sound.
A Note on Pronunciation
The reality is is that, like Latin, there are few, if any native speakers today. Many people in India, and even abroad, learn Sanskrit (and for good reason), but each person colors their Sanskrit pronunciation with their own native language. That’s ok. It’s normal. So, nobody today pronounces it perfectly.
That said, even knowing a few basics rules, like the ones I highlighted above, will go a long way to really appreciating how beautiful Sanskrit is, and when reciting Buddhist mantras or prayers, it really brings them to life. Give it a try!
But also don’t worry: the Sanskrit Police will not arrest you if you make a mistake.
Sandhi Rules
Every language has at least some rules where sounds blend together or change sightly to make things smoother. Some languages have more rules than others. Sanskrit has a lot. These are called “Sandhi” rules (the grammatical term “sandhi” even comes from Sanskrit). While Sandhi rules for Sanskrit are a huge pain to learn, they are super important for making sense of Sanskrit, including Buddhist Sanskrit. Why? Let’s look at an example below.
buddhāya – Buddha, but with a dative-case ending: to the Buddha. We’ll get to conjugation soon.
Glomming words together like this is common in Sanskrit, and the Sandhi rules help “glue” them together. Of particular note is the final aḥ in the first word, followed by a vowel. According to Sandhi rules (very handy chart here), aḥ + vowel sound changes to o. So, namaḥ + amitābha becomes namo‘mitābha. The apostrophe is a visual tool to help with readability.
For Avalokiteśvara, the famous bodhisattva, if we were to praise them, the same Sandhi rule would apply: namo‘valokiteśvara.
On the other hand, if we were to praise Śariputra, the Buddha’s important monastic disciple, then according to Sandhi rules aḥ + ś would not actually change and simply be namaḥ śariputra written as two words.
Similarly, if a bunch of Buddhas (buddhāḥ) were going somewhere (gacchanti), the Sandhi rules would simply drop the ḥ: buddhāgacchanti
Anyhow, these are pretty basic examples, but Sandhi rules get complicated, and memorizing the entire Sandhi chart isn’t necessary for most people. The important thing to understand is that when two words abut one another, the final sound of the first word, and initial sound of the second often blend together to make pronunciation smoother. Further, Sanskrit often strings multiple words together in written form.
Conjugation
If you ever dealt with noun declensions in classic languages like Latin and Greek, guess what? Sanskrit has them too. Since they are distant cousins, this isn’t really all that surprising.
Modern languages have comparatively fewer conjugations because over the centuries languages become smoother and more streamlined. Modern Indian languages based off Sanskrit such as Hindi, Gujarati, and Bengali are relatively simple to learn, while Romance languages like Spanish, French and Italian are streamlined versions of Latin. In the same way, modern Greek is a simpler, more streamlined version of classic Koine Greek, which itself was a simpler, more standardized form of ancient dialects such as Homeric Greek.
Older Indo-European languages often had complicated conjugation and inflection systems, and since Sanskrit is among the oldest, it’s inflection system is quite complex.
Like every language, Sanskrit has to describe who does what to whom, and with what. Languages like English usually use prepositions like “to”, “from”, “with”, etc. Japanese and Korean uses particles. Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek use inflected endings. For example, let’s look at the word Buddha:
buddhaḥ , usually just written as buddha – this is the nominative form (e.g. “the Buddha”).
buddham, this is the accusative form (e.g. a verb does something to the Buddha)
buddhāya – this is the dative form meaning “to” or “for” someone. Or for indirect objects. (e.g. we give a direct object to the Buddha)
buddheṇa, this is the instrumental form (e.g. “with the Buddha”)
buddhe, this is the locative form (e.g. “on the Buddha”)
buddhāt, this is the ablative form (e.g. “away from the Buddha”)
And so on. You can convey a lot with inflection in just one word, but the drawback is that the rules are complicated to learn.
Further, Sanskrit divides nouns into the following declensions:
Masculine nouns with “a” endings – Buddhaḥ, bodhisattva, nṛpaḥ (king), etc.
Neuter nouns with “a” endings, satyam (truth), vanam (forest), śāstram (a Buddhist treatise)
Feminine nouns with “ā” endings – adityā (sun)
Feminine nouns with “ī” endings – bhikṣunī (a buddhist nun), nadī (river)
Masculine, neuter, and feminine “u” endings – bhikṣhu (a buddhist monk), Vasubandhu (the famous monk), dhenu (cow)
Nouns with “ṛ” endings – pitṛ (father), mātṛ (mother)
In short, it’s a lot. There are 12 different categories of noun declensions (Latin had 5, iirc, or slightly more if you count things like masculine first declension, etc).
Note that “grammatical gender” is not always the same as the actual gender of an object. It’s just how nouns are organized. The word for sun is “feminine”, but moon is “masculine”. There’s usually no logic to which gender a word fits, it is just what category it happens to fit.
Conclusion
Knowing Sanskrit is not required to be a devout Buddhist. Buddhism doesn’t really rely on the notion of a “holy language”, so Sanskrit is just as good as Pāli, which is just as good as Classical Chinese (a frequently underrated language), which is just as good as Korean, Japanese, English, French, Ukrainian, etc.
But Mahayana Buddhism does owe much to Sanskrit due to how the tradition grew and then consolidated along the Silk Road before coming to China. Thus, knowing even a little bit of Sanskrit is a really nice way to connect with the past, and appreciate what we’ve inherited thus far.
This page is pretty unpolished, and probably has a few errors, but I hope you find it useful.
Namo’mitābhabuddhāya
Edit: Somehow my blog app kept re-posting an old draft, making publishing difficult. This should all be cleaned up now, and other typos have been corrected as well.
A pair of Nara Deer hanging around near Kasuga Grand Shrine in Nara. Taken in July 2023.
While visiting Kyoto and Nara recently, I started to pick up on some differences in Japanese language that took me a bit off-guard. I am not fluent in Japanese, but I consider myself functional (i.e. “good enough”), and since my wife is from the Kanto region around Tokyo, I’ve gotten used to Tokyo-style Japanese.
I know about Kansai-dialect since it’s often used on TV and comedy, but what I didn’t know is that places like Kyoto and Nara have their own sub-dialects, too within the Kansai dialect.
Kyoto Dialect
At Kyoto Station I often saw signs read おこしやす (okoshiyasu) which is the Kyoto way of saying welcome!
Other phrases often used include:
Okini – a Kansai-dialect way of saying arigato! (Thanks!)
Oideyasu – similar to the Tokyo-area phrase irasshaimasé this is how shops welcome customers when they first step in.
Dosu – this is another famous Kyoto-ism that replaces the standard Japanese desu.
Agaru / Sagaru – the verbs for “going up” (agaru) and “going down” (sagaru) can also mean going north and south respectively in Kyoto dialect.
Verb + よし – similar to standard Japanese command -なさい, this is an informal way of telling someone to do something.
Omaku – a colloquialism for a pillow (compare with standard makura).
Ohana ni iku – a phrase used when someone is heading for a tea party, a banquet, or other similar social functions.
Aisa ni – similar to standard Japanese phrase tokidoki (“sometimes”, “occasionally”).
Yasukenai – something unrefined or in poor taste. Similar to standard Japanese shina ga nai.
Yayako – a Kyoto word for “baby”.
Hona – a phrase for “goodbye”.
Kibaru – same as Japanese ganbaru, which is a key phrase to learn in Japanese.
Nara Dialect
I found, as a foreigner, Nara dialect a little hard to pick up in my experience. While Nara was once the capital of Japan a long, long time ago it is a pretty rural part of Japan now. Japanese spoken there differed somewhat from the “standard” Kansai dialect most people know. It is often described by other native Japanese speakers as a “cuter version” of Kansai-dialect.
One interesting aspect of Nara dialect is that “z” sounds are replaced with “d” sounds. For example the word for elephant, zōsan, becomes dōsan.
Another example is the colloquial ending yayo which replaces Tokyo-style dayo. Endings like yasu and mi are also used too, in place of standard ending ne.
Information in English about the Nara dialect is pretty slim, so I don’t have a good list of specific phrases, unlike Kyoto dialect.
A while back, I talked about a famous Rinzai-sect Zen temple named Ryoanji that my wife and I had visited in 2005, shortly after we got married. During our latest trip to Kyoto (mentioned here and here), we got to see Ryoanji again, and this time, armed with a better camera, better weather, and more background knowledge, I was able to better appreciate the visit.
The temple was founded shortly before the disastrous Onin War, a grinding, destructive urban war that ravaged the city of Kyoto over a succession dispute, and ironically the founder of the temple was one of the major combatants, Hosokawa Katsumoto. The temple of Ryoanji was an active monastery for a long time, a second-tier temple in the Five Mountains system in the 14th century, a hierarchy of Rinzai-Zen temples patronized by the Shogunate at the time, but tourism has pushed out the original monastic training to other temples, or other parts of the complex.
Historically, like many Zen temples of the Five Mountains System, Ryoanji got tangled in politics and urban life at the time, for better or for worse,1 but even so, it was clear that over the generations, the temple community there cared about Zen and tried their best to put things into practice and that love and care showed even now.
Today, Ryoanji is best-known for its “Zen garden” or karé-sansui (枯山水) in Japanese. You might have seen pictures of it before, but seeing the real thing is pretty interesting. On the one hand, it’s surprisingly small, but on the other, there’s an ineffable feeling when you are there. There are plenty of theories about who designed the famous “garden”, but there’s no clear evidence one way or another. So, it’s design and history remain a mystery.
The temple itself is fairly small, but is part of a large, secluded area north of Kyoto. You can see a map of the complex here:
It was hot and muggy that day, and my gout, which thankfully only flares up rarely,2 was in full swing, so walking was quite painful. Nevertheless, we had already booked the tour, so we soldiered on. Ryoanji, after the chaos and traffic of other places, was a welcome respite. This is the main gate, which is shown on the map above at the bottom-right.
Ryoanji has a large garden area before you get to the temple itself:
From here, you come to the temple complex itself:
I vaguely recall that this was the “kitchen god”, a minor deity venerated to prevent fires in the kitchen. The first room of the temple, before you get to the garden, was formerly the kitchen, if I recall correctly.
And finally, the temple opens up to the famous sand garden:
More pictures here:
It seemed to be a fairly quiet day at Ryoanji, so we had a chance to sit down on the veranda and admire the view for a bit. The last time I came in 2005, the garden was snow-covered, so I didn’t really get to see much (but still a great experience in its own way):
Me, February 2005 at Ryoanji, with no idea what I was doing. 😅
Much has been discussed about the garden, the symbolism of the particular rocks, the use of the Golden Ratio in its proportions, etc., but for me, it was just neat to see in person. As I said earlier, there’s an ineffable feeling when you’re there. Amidst the chatter and people shuffling around, you
Just behind the veranda are also some black-ink murals:
From there you see the famous tsukubai, though since I didn’t have a photo this trip, here is the same thing from 2005:
The tsukubai has a square opening in the middle, and Chinese characters (kanji) on each side. The square, combined with each Chinese character form different Chinese characters, forming the sentence: 吾唯足知 or waré tada taru (wo) shiru, meaning something like “I only know contentment”, or rather more loosely, “Just as I am, I am sufficient”.
From there, visitors loop around through the garden again on the other side, which is very peaceful:
Here’s me and my teenage daughter being silly, imitating a funny Japanese comedy duo named EXIT (ポンポン！):
From here, we went to the gift shop near the exit, where I picked up a nice little incense holder,2 and of course some incense.
Ryoanji isn’t as big a tourist draw in Kyoto as some other temples, but to be honest it was a really nice experience. The quieter atmosphere, the slower pace, and the amazing art really made an impression on me more than the whirlwind experiences we had at other temples that day. Even as it hurt to walk constantly, I still felt a sense of calm and peace I hadn’t enjoyed in a while.
It reminded me of a similar experience I had back in Victoria BC, where I felt a sense of calm and clarity and a healthier perspective on things that stuck with me upon my return to the US. This might sound silly or New Age-y, but as a Buddhist for almost 20 years now, amidst the constant distractions of life and struggles with practice, the chance to stop and gain a different perspective for even a couple of hours, every so often is really valuable. Ryoanji was an unexpected highlight of the trip for me, and someday I hope to go there again.
P.S. I’ve been really heads down working on the other blog lately, plus also dealing with plenty of parental and work issues, so I am somewhat behind on blogging.
1 The famous monk, Ikkyu, grumbled about this quite a bit. Then again, Ikkyu wasn’t a saint himself. 😉 Like the Buddhist temples of the earlier Heian Period, the Zen temples of the Ashikaga Shogunate tended to be lax in monastic discipline, host parties with nobility, and get into all sorts of disreputable behavior. Besides Ikkyu, I am sure there were more serious-minded monks, but then again with any religion anywhere across history, given a sufficiently large community, you get a spectrum of saints and scallywags. Such is Humanity.
2 Rarely enough that I can avoid taking prescription medication, and focus on eating a healthier diet, plus lots of water daily. Weight loss has also helped.
3 I have some incense from Japan from previous trips, but my Western incense holders do not properly fit, so the incense tends to lean or fall over. Different holders for differently-sized incense.
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 
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