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Root Trees · धातुवृक्षाः
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Nearly every word you know grew from a seed
Sanskrit keeps its roots visible — the old grammarians held that every noun could be traced to one, and for most of the words you will meet they were right. Once you can see the root गम् inside गच्छति, गमनम्, आगच्छति and दुर्गमः, you stop learning words one at a time and start learning them by the dozen. A hundred and ten seeds are planted here, sorted into the ten classes.
√गम्
The little hook √ is how grammarians mark a root — read √गम् as “the root gam”. Nothing mathematical about it: it just says this is a seed, not a finished word.
The seed · धातुः
it moves as
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A root is a seed, but it does not sprout the same way in every family. Sanskrit sorts its roots into ten classes — गणाः — by what happens between the root and the ending in the present tense. Each class is named after its first member, so class 1 is भ्वादि, “भू and the rest”. You never have to memorise this: the ear learns the shape, and the name comes after.
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Round {{ qNum }} of {{ qTotal }} · found {{ qScore }}
Which seed did this word grow from?
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A hundred and ten seeds sit in this garden, and each holds a family of six or eight more words. This is why Sanskrit gets easier the further in you go.