|
Exercise Page 188
|
|
CORRECTIONS:
- Page 189, Line 14 of the exercises प्रभावेन should be प्रभावेण due to sandhi
- Page 194, the eighth entry from the bottom is written as धनस्. It should be धनुस्.
Optative Mood
The present and imperfect tenses learned so far belong to the 'indicative' mood. This means they convey an action that really is taking place or really has taken place. In contrast, the 'optative' mood conveys a potential action. Hence it is usually translated in English with the auxiliary verbs 'could', 'should', 'would', 'may', 'might', etc. Context will determine which auxiliary verb is most appropriate. In some instances, the optative mood may also be better translated into a simple present or future form in English. Optative mood forms are easy to recognize because almost all of them have the letter ए in their final form, e.g. पश्येत्, पश्येयुः, पश्येः, etc.
Vowel Sandhi
Although vowel sandhi has appeared occasionally in previous exercises, it is finally formally introduced in this lesson. There are essentially three types:
सवर्ण-दीर्घ:
Note that in the first two types, two vowels are always replaced by a single vowel. When this occurs between two words, they will have to be written without a space in between them. For example, उकत्वा एकं must be written as उक्त्वैकं.
NOTE: There is one more type of vowel sandhi omitted in this lesson, which was briefly introduced in Lesson 5 in the context of deriving the stem of a verb from its root. Details can be found on Page 668, and are summarized below:
सवर्ण-दीर्घ:
- अ/आ followed by अ/आ are both together replaced by आ
- इ/ई followed by इ/ई are both together replaced by ई
- उ/ऊ followed by उ/ऊ are both together replaced by ऊ
- अ/आ followed by इ/ई are both together replaced by ए
- अ/आ followed by उ/ऊ are both together replaced by ओ
- अ/आ followed by ऋ/ॠ are both together replaced by अर्
- अ/आ followed by ए/ऐ are both together replaced by ऐ
- अ/आ followed by ओ/औ are both together replaced by औ
- इ/ई is replaced by य् when followed by any vowel
- उ/ऊ is replaced by व् when followed by any vowel
- ऋ/ॠ is replaced by र् when followed by any vowel
Note that in the first two types, two vowels are always replaced by a single vowel. When this occurs between two words, they will have to be written without a space in between them. For example, उकत्वा एकं must be written as उक्त्वैकं.
NOTE: There is one more type of vowel sandhi omitted in this lesson, which was briefly introduced in Lesson 5 in the context of deriving the stem of a verb from its root. Details can be found on Page 668, and are summarized below:
- ए is replaced by अय् when followed by any vowel (but the य् is often dropped if at the end of a word)
- ऐ is replaced by आय् when followed by any vowel (but the य् is often dropped if at the end of a word)
- ओ is replaced by अव् when followed by any vowel
- औ is replaced by आव् when followed by any vowel
- EXCEPTION: When ए/ओ at the end of a word are followed by अ at the beginning of the next word, instead of the above sandhi, the अ is usually dropped (and replaced with an avagraha symbol ऽ)
Principles of Translation
Now that many types of words and sentence structures have been introduced, it would be useful to expand on the principles and process of translation that were presented in the first lesson. In general, it is helpful to approach the translation of a sentence in the following order to simplify the process and prevent oversight of any aspect of the sentence:
- Sandhi: Rewrite the sentence with all sandhis 'broken'. In particular, look out for less obvious sandhis, such as the dropping of a visarga, e.g. always consider the possibility of a visarga when a word ending in आ is followed by a voiced letter.
- Stem/Root and meaning: Identify the noun/verb stem or verbal root of each word and their meaning. Look up unknown words in the vocabulary list. Determine the meanings of compound words (the steps for analyzing compounds were listed in Lesson 12).
- Grammatical classification: Classify each noun with its case/number, each verb with its tense/person/number, and other verb forms (gerund, etc.) and indeclinable words.
- Identify main clause: Each sentence should have a main clause consisting of either subject (first case) + verb ± object (second case), or object (first case) ± subject (third case) + PPP. Identifying and translating this main clause sets the context for the sentence, and all other words and phrases in the sentence can be added to this main clause. Note that a sentence with a conjunction (च 'and') or with a relative-correlative (यद्-तद्) pair will have multiple main clauses.
- Divide into parts: To facilitate the translation of a longer sentence, it can be divided into parts based on: verbs (especially gerunds and participles), locative absolute phrases, and relative-correlative phrases. Verbs are generally connected with nouns that immediately precede them.
