1.1 Verbs are formed from roots, stems and endings.
1.2 First person is ‘I’, second person is ‘you’, third person is ‘he, she or it’.
1.3 The word ca ‘and’ is enclitic, as in ‘Eggs bacon ca
2.1 Singular: one doer of the verb.
2.2 Dual: two doers of the verb
3.1 Plural: three or more doers of the verb.
3.2 The word na ‘no’ is enclitic - use before the verb.
4.1 Nominative is for the doer of the verb.
4.2 Accusative is for the object of the verb.
5.1 Instrumental means ‘with’ or ‘by’.
5.2 Dative means ‘for
6.1 Ablative means ‘from’.
6.2 Genitive means ‘of’.
6.3 iti ‘thus’ closes a quote.
7.1 Locative means ‘in’/’on’.
7.2 Vocative is used for addressing.
7.3 NAIDAGLV
8.1 Two similar vowels make a long vowel.
8.2 An avagraha is an elided a.
8.3 The letters i, u and e as dual endings are not subject to sandhi.
8.4 Vocatives are not subject to sandhi
9.1 ‘The king has a horse’ – nṛpasya aśvaḥ bhavati
9.2 aḥ meets a voiced consonant becomes o.
9.3 āḥ meets a voiced consonant become ā.
9.4 Any other ḥ meets a voiced consonant becomes r.
9.5 aḥ + a = o + avagraha .
10.0 Vowel meets consonant: no change
10.1 A final m always becomes ṃ except before a vowel
or the end of a line
10.2 After sandhi, vowels, ḥ or ṃ never join
10.3 After sandhi, consonants always join
10.4 A virāma in the middle of a sentence means you have
probably made a mistake
10.5 In the sentence X is Y, both X and Y are nominative
10.6 Royce's rule: If a sentence does not have a verb the
verb is 'is'
10.7 Adjectives must agree with nouns in gender, case and
number
11.1 s preceded by any vowel other than a or ā become ṣ
11.2 n preceded by r, ṛ, ṝ or ṣ become ṇ
11.3 short word, starts with t: probably a pronoun
11.4 pronouns like 'he' also means 'that'
11.5 saḥ drops its visarga except before a and the end of the line
11.6 adjectives come before the nouns they modify
11.7 iva, eva and evam mean like, indeed and thus
12.1 Gerunds are your friend, they are indeclinable, God’s gift to the students of Sanskrit.
12.2 Gerunds end in -tvā, when the verb has a prefix, gerunds end in -ya
13.1 Relative-correlative ‘yad-tad’ constructions are like two little red flags.
14.1 The imperfect is formed with a short-a augment and ‘shorter’ endings.
14.2 The augments comes between verbals prefixes and the stem.
15.1 Final m meets a consonant, becomes ṃ and never joins.
15.2 Final m meets a vowel, stays as m and always joins.
15.3 Middles have imperfects too, like alabhata.
16.1 In nouns with variable stems, the first five forms are strong, but the first form is often ‘defective’.
16.2. Paradigms in -an are strongly generic.
16.3. āsam, āsīt, āsan.
16.4 A dvandva is like a shopping list, units are equally important and joined with ‘and’.
16.5 The number of a dvandva is determined by the total number of units.
16.6 The gender of a dvandva is determined by the gender of the last unit.
16.7 A samāhāra is a unity of opposites, like sukhaduḥkham, and is neuter singular.
16.8 You can negate a noun or an adjective with a short-a, but not a verb.
17.1 The future is formed with guṇa of the root plus -sya or -iṣya.
18.1 Karmadhāraya (KD), like śulka-mālā ‘white-garland’, if resolved would be in the same case, often adjective+noun.
18.2 Tatpuruṣa (TP), like tat-puruṣa ‘his man’, if resolved would be in different cases.
18.3 Words in compounds appear in stem form (except when they don’t).
19.1 The suffix -vān (like bhagavān) shows possession.
19.2 Vṛddhi derivative: strengthen to vṛddhi, add -ya.
19.3 The imperative gives and order, like an emperor.
19.4 Upapada is a compound made with a verbal root.
20.1 Verbal classes 1,4,6 and 10 (‘thematic verbs’) are ‘easy’, stems all end in -a, single form of stem only.
20.2 Non-1,4,6 and 10s (‘athematic verbs’) are ‘tricky’, stems often end in consonants, and have weak and strong forms.
20.3 In Non-1,4,6, and 10s, the singular (plus others) are strong.
20.4 Active construction: ‘The dog bites the man’. Passive construction: ‘The man is bitten by the dog’.
20.5 Passives are built off the root, add -ya- plus middle endings.
20.6 In a passive construction, the logical object of the verb is the grammatical subject of the sentence.
21.1 A word cannot end in -s.
21.2 Bahuvrīhi (BV) - ‘much-rice’, i.e. ‘whose rice is much’, ‘whose B is A’, like an adjective, may change gender.
22.1 Participle: a word that is derived from a verb but functions like a noun or an adjective.
22.2 Past passive participles (PPPs): like ‘-ed’ in English, formed with -ta, -ita or -na.
22.3 Reduplication: loss of aspiration.
22.4 Long vowels reduplicate as short vowels.
22.5 Only the first consonant reduplicates (except when it doesn’t).
22.6 Velars reduplicate as palatals.
22.7 h- reduplicates as j-
23.1 -in indicates possession like hastin - ‘possessing a hand’.
23.2 nouns in -in go to -ī in nominative singular, like hastī.
24.1 Periphrastic future: like gantā-asi, agentive noun in -tā plus part of as, ‘to be’.
24.2 Auxiliary is dropped in all third-person forms.
24.3 Never use the word ‘gerundive’ (why?)
24.4 Future passive participles (FPPs) end in -tavya, -anīya (both easy) or -ya (hard).
24.5 How do you tell a gerund in -ya from an FPP in -ya? FPPs decline.
25.1 Pronominal adjectives are adjectives that decline like pronouns (except when they don’t). Example: sarve janāḥ.
25.2 hanti ‘he kills’; ghnanti ‘they kill’.