Postby Rivaldo » 2012-12-31, 6:48
I've tried to learn sanskrit for some years having as only resource the book "Teach yourself sanskrit" by Michael Coulson.
I've done the full book about 3 times and tried to read sanskrit in bilingual books - some bilingual editions of Kalidasa texts, all I could find. The result was that I could read it very slowly, with lots of gaps, using the aid of the transliteration to latin script and online dictionaries. Still, I couldn't understand exactly half of the meaning of the poems, and only the "sakuntala" piece was more understandable, althought I could read it only veryyy slowly, so I never finished the first part...
In fact, I've never grasped well the grammar(the many declinations and verb conjugations for example) neither some aspects of writting aglutination, for considering Michael Coulson's book the toughest language book I ever had in my hands... I also had little experience in more extent reading, as his book only provides little phrases for practicing.
In this situation, is there a material someone could recommend to me? A learning-grammar more easy and with more reading than Coulson's? Or indicate some literature and bilingual-texts I could practice better than with Kalidasa's ones?
I was thinking on re-working all Coulson's book again, this time with more attention, but I don't know if this would be finally succesful.