Hare Krsna Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. My name is Nityananda Dasa, a student of late Sri Gopiparanadhana Prabhu, and for more than a decade a Sanskrit translator and editor for the BBT. I have just released a very important online course - "Sanskrit Pronunciation for ISKCON". It's focus is correct pronunciation of all the standard ISKCON prayers that are in Sanskrit. It is totally free of cost and is about 2.5 hours long, which includes high-quality demo videos, in-depth tutorials on pronunciation and singing of each prayer (from Sanskrit perspective), and downloadable materials. It is the first of its kind comprehensive video presentation on this topic - user-friendly, easy to follow, and very visual. You can judge it for yourself - here is the link for the whole course on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3j7yBLU Apart from just pronunciation, the course introduces devotees to foundational Sanskrit chanting principles. However, I do not possess the tools and wide scope of outreach to inform our society at large about it - temples, congregations, etc. So I approach you with the request to send out an announcement to the worldwide devotee community about the course. I am convinced that thousands of devotees could be benefited by having such an accessible material on the topic at their fingertips. More than just pronunciation of individual words, the cutting edge of this course is that I teach the devotees how to retain the correct pronunciation while singing with the beat - placement of syllables along the karatala strokes, etc. This is crucial, as even if someone knows the right articulation (specifically, long and short vowels, but not only limited to that), it would always get diluted with the karatala beat, which takes over. Living in India for already a third decade, I keenly observed how singers who are learned in Sanskrit tackle this while they sing, and tried to communicate this to the ISKCON audience by giving them the ready-made solution for all the standard songs. The full version of the course is published on my website - www.sanskritsense.com, along with all the downloadable materials. There I will engage in student discussions & Q/A as well (I won't be doing it on Youtube as much). Hope to hear from you soon, your humble servant, Nityananda Dasa
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