Topic Research: Understanding Sanskrit and the Sounds of Sanskrit

Hello VagaBuddies,

At much encouragement, and with genuine curiosity, I have decided to do a storybook focusing on Sanskrit! (probably a death sentence but we will see!)
For this week's research, I decided to just focus on some of the sounds of Sanskrit and becoming familiar with how the language sounds. First, I started at Valmiki's Ramayana, which gave a wonderful page that allowed me to see the original Sanskrit, the romanticized Sanskrit, an English language, and English commentary about the passage, all at once! For about 15-20 minutes, I just tried to follow along the romanticized script! Even just that was pretty difficult!

A necessary phrase after trying to follow along Sanskrit : Illumine

After struggling through this a little bit, I decided to try to find linguistic descriptions of the sounds that Sanskrit uses that aren't in English, so I could try to familiarize myself with those sounds before I went back to trying to follow along. English already has a lot of vowels, so luckily I didn't have much to learn there, just a few consonant-vowel mergers such as ɽɪ (think of a classed rolled 'r' but only doing one tap instead of the full roll, and saying the vowel from 'sit' at the same time). For my own notes (or for other interested people), here are all the vowels of Sanskrit:

IPA Nagari IAST English approximation

ɐ अ, प         a         comma

aː आ, पा ā         bra

ɪ इ, पि         i         sit

iː ई, पी         ī         feet

ʊ उ, पु         u         look

uː ऊ, पू         ū         loot

ɽɪ ऋ, पृ         ṛ         as rri

ɽiː ॠ, पॄ         ṝ         as rrī

lɪ ऌ, पॢ         ḷ         as lli

liː ॡ, पॣ         ḹ         as llī

eː ए, पे         e         wait

ai ऐ, पै         ai         hi

oː ओ, पो o         old

au औ, पौ au         h'ow

◌̃ ँ         ◌̃/m̐ nasal vowel [ɐ̃], [ãː], [õː], etc.) *

*ok I have only like half an idea what this vowel is supposed sound like. 

The consonants of Sanskrit were a bit trickier. For the non-linguists, we describe consonants with three characteristics: where the sound is made with the tongue (the place of articulation), how the sound is made (manner of articulation), and whether you use your vocal cords or not (voicing). For example, the [p] in 'pit' would be described as a voiced (vocal cords are engaged) bilabial (made at your lips) stop (you one puff of air and then none more). One important note about Sanskrit is that it makes a distinction between aspirated consonants and un-aspirated consonants. In English, this would be like if the [p] sounds in 'pie' and 'ripe' were completely different letters. In 'pie' we also release a little bit of air when we make the [p] sound (called aspiration), but we don't when we make the [p] sound in 'ripe.' That tiny difference to us would be as clear as the difference between [b] and [p] to Sanskrit speakers, so it's something that I should watch for.

For next week's research topic, I want to delve further into what stories I could use. Right now, I still really enjoyed the Ganges Origin story that I talked about in my Ramayana Reading A Notes and the Story of this week, so I would like to use that story. Potentially focusing in-depth on a couple words to discover the full breadth of their meaning, or using a couple short mantras to describe broad trends in the stories! We will see next week!
Vaga-Buon Voyage