The Sanskrit Library

Courses/courses

Basic Marathi

Beginners’ Course in Marathi for second language learners

  • UM101
  • This course is intended to initiate students to the learning of Marathi. The course is mainly meant for the second language learners of Marathi who are University students and intend to familiarize themselves with the language and culture of Maharashtra as a part of their South Asian Studies. This course could be understood as a part of a series of courses that teach Marathi at ascending levels. For the course is being taught to the adult learners, Marathi language and grammar would be contrasted with the first languages of the learners. The method would be a mix of grammar-translation and direct with contrastive analysis to help the adult learners learn at a fair pace.
  • Instructor: Chinmay Dharurkar
  • Instructor's introductory video
  • Schedule: 7 June--29 July 2022
  • Course meeting times: Tuesday and Thursday 9.30–10:30am U.S. Central Time; 8–9pm IST
  • Prerequisite: No.
  • Course fee: $1,000.
  • Course fee for Indian residents: ₹10,000.
  • Register
  • Register (Indian residents)
  • Course materials:
    1. My Marathi Book 1 (MM1)
Weeks Topic
Week 1 Script: the basic letters, vowels and consonants. A brief outline of the speech sounds and pronunciations. The logic of a syllabic script. Transliteration schemes used in academics for Marathi and Indian languages
Week 2 The idea of bArAKaqI. Conventions of the adaption of Devanagari script. Match and mismatch in ‘read and as you write.’ Conjuncts and their reading.
Week 3 Nouns and pronouns. The pronominal system – personal pronoun chart. Person, number, gender. Inflectional form of a noun or pronoun. Cases and case-markers Numerals 1-10. Added vocabulary: some basic adverbs of place and time, interrogative forms.
Week 4 The verbs: types (basic transitive, intransitive). Present tense: Simple present. Agreement marking on the verb. The verb to BE. Word order: SOV, sentence construction. Numerals 11-90. Weekdays
Week 5 Present tense for a handful of verbs. The verb NOT TO BE. Dative subject constructions: WANT. Numerals 100 onwards, 1,000, 100,000 etc. Months, Marathi months, names of some festivals.
Week 6 Negation of the present tense. Formal and informal forms. Present progressive. The verb to BE and its uses, contractions (formal/informal forms). Years, quoting years in common era and śaka calendar.
Week 7 Negation of the present progressive. Telling time. Adjectives-agreement and inflectional forms. Numerals: halves, quarters, quantities.
Week 8 Accent, word order, clauses, conjunctions. Reading practice for the tense/aspect learnt.