Adverbs

Also known as: kriyāviśeṣaṇa ("qualification of an action")

Introduction

Recall that adjectives allow us to describe a noun. Although we can describe nouns, we don't yet have a way to describe verbs. That is, we can say The beautiful man goes, but we can't say The man goes beautifully.

In English, words that let us describe the verb are called adverbs. Adverbs exist in Sanskrit, too:

Adverbs are easy to form and use, so this should be a quick lesson.

Formation

Most adverbs come directly from adjectives. The neuter singular case 1 form of any adjective is a complete adverb. Adverbs are treated like uninflected words.

Adverbs can appear anywhere in the sentence, but they usually appears near the beginning of the sentence.

More properly, adverbs probably come from case 2. But since case 1 and case 2 are identical, there's no harm in saying that they come from case 1.

Devanagari: Common consonants 21 - 25

Here is the next batch of consonants. There are eight more to learn after this.

देवनागरी
IAST
tha
ba
ña
ṭa
ṅa

Note the subtle difference between and . The slash on makes the letter look like it is broken in two.

The similarity between and has been the source of many errors in Sanskrit manuscripts. This confusion seems to have also been a part of the language itself. Thus a word like śaibya is often written as śaivya.