सरल आधुनिक संस्कृत

Modern Spoken Sanskrit (सरल संस्कृतम् sarala saṃskṛtam "Simple Sanskrit", or भाषितसंस्कृतम् bhāṣita-saṃskṛtam "spoken Sanskrit") is the pedagogically simplified, actively oral form of Sanskrit cultivated since the late 20th century, primarily by the Samskrita Bharati movement (founded 1981 in Bangalore by Chamu Krishna Shastry). Distinguished from canonical Classical Sanskrit (sa, the Pāṇinian literary canon) by: (1) simplified sandhi — sentences keep word boundaries clear instead of fusing all junctures via Pāṇinian rules; (2) conversational lexical preferences (snehaḥ over prema for "love", kukkuraḥ over śvā for "dog", akṣi over netram for "eye", namaskāraḥ over namaste); (3) modern technical coinages (saṅgaṇaka "computer", dūrabhāṣa "telephone", mūṣakaḥ "computer mouse"); (4) active oral pedagogy targeting fluent everyday conversation. ~25K self-claimed L1 speakers in the 2011 Indian Census, plus tens of thousands of L2 learners through Samskrita Bharati's 10-day courses and the Sanskrit-medium school network. Distinct from the Vedic (vsa) and Classical (sa) corpora that this movement's pedagogy is built on.