Learn Sanskrit through Shlokas! - 1

I want to try something new here. Can one learn Sanskrit by understanding some shlokas? Here is my first attempt!

मूकं करोति वाचालं पङ्गुं लङ्घयते गिरिम् ।

यत्कृपा तमहं वन्दे परमानन्दमाधवम् ॥

mūkaṃ karoti vācālaṃ paṅguṃ laṅghayate girim ।
yatkṛpā tamahaṃ vande paramānandamādhavam ॥

What does this shloka mean exactly?

I bow down to that Lord of Lakshmi, who is the embodiment of Supreme Bliss; whose compassion makes a dumb person talkative, and makes a lame person climb a mountain!

Ten words in Sanskrit take here thirty words of explanation in English! Wow. 

In Sanskrit, we compact the message by using compound words called Samāsa-s. In fact, this language is Samskṛtam,  a compound word which means "Well constructed". These compound words are easy to understand once we get the hang of it. For example, the compound word for a student is Vidyārthī,  which means one who seeks knowledge! In English, too, we have such derived words with compounded meaning, e.g. democracy. demo-cracy meaning rule of the people. In Sanskrit, it would be Loka-tantram.

 By the way, I am typing all the original Sanskrit words in italics here. Also, they are shown with diacritical marks that make the pronunciation unambiguous. You can read up and understand this here:

So, now, shall we jump into understanding this shloka?

mūkaṃ a dumb person

 karoti makes

 vācālaṃ a talkative man

 paṅguṃ a lame person

 laṅghayate makes climb 

girim a mountain
yatkṛpā  whose compassion

tam Him

ahaṃ I

vande bow down to

parama+ānanda Supreme Bliss (embodiment of)

-mā-dhavam  Lord of Lakshmi

Reordering the words,

ahaṃ I

vande bow down to

tam Him

parama+ānanda Supreme Bliss (embodiment of)

-mā-dhavam  Lord of Lakshmi

yatkṛpā  whose compassion

 karoti makes

mūkaṃ a dumb person

vācālaṃ a talkative man

laṅghayate makes  paṅguṃ a lame person climb 

girim a mountain.

In English, we use conjunctions and prepositions to connect the words. In Sanskrit, these are built into the words themselves! This makes for compactness as well as unambiguity. This also does away with the need for the correct sequence of words, since wherever we place the word in a sentence, it means the same. 

For example, 

Rāmaḥ rāvaṇaṃ hanti  means Rama kills Ravana. 

Rāvaṇaṃ rāmaḥ hanti  also means Rama kills Ravana.  This won't work in English, because we dare not write Ravana kills Rama😀 

Vande mātaram ! Vande samskṛtam !