It’s not so hard to learn Sanskrit, says Bhanu Swami

Sanskrit is Greek to most people but for Bhanu Swami Maharaj (pic) the ancient language is a cinch to master. The Canadian of Japanese descent said the sacred language of Hinduism may seem complicated but it was easier than most languages because it was phonetic-based. “There are vowels and consonants but you only have to memorise 60. Reading it is easy. It is unlike the character-based Chinese or Japanese languages where you have to remember 6,000 to 10,000 characters,” said the scholar, 67. However, he said that while Sanskrit words were pronounced exactly as they were written, “it can also be difficult as there are many conjugation and declension of nouns and verbs”.