P01 · Your First Sanskrit Sentence

"kathayati — 'he narrates'. Do you hear กถา (Thai: "narration") inside it? It's right there.
'I narrate'? Swap -ti for -mi: kathayāmi." (Student: kathayāmi)
"'You narrate'? — -si: kathayasi. Three endings: -ti he/she, -mi I, -si you."
"Now try your บูชา (Thai: "worship"): pūjayati (he worships) → 'I worship'?" (Student deduces: pūjayāmi)
"Now the verb of คติ (Thai: "destination"): gacchati (he goes) → 'I go'?" (gacchāmi) "'You go'?" (gacchasi)
"paṭhati → 'I read'?" (paṭhāmi) "jīvati → 'I live'?" (jīvāmi)

▸ Mechanisms 2+3+5: incremental, zero terminology, one set of endings transported across all verbs. All six verbs are relatives of the students' Thai vocabulary — MT's vocabulary capital cashed in, happening right in lesson one.

"'He doesn't speak' — place na before the verb: na vadati."
"'Are you reading?' — place kim at the front: kiṃ paṭhasi?"

▸ Uninflected words — low-friction track (a breath).

Building blocks (use first, analyze later — this lesson's set):

"Three ready-to-use building blocks, never inflected: aham (I) — you already know this one: อหังการ (Thai: "arrogance, ego") = ahaṃ-kāra 'I-maker', aham is hiding right inside it! (For emphasis: aham paṭhāmi; in ordinary speech -mi already suffices);
saḥ／sā (he/she) + kaḥ／kā (who) — the identification game starts now: eṣaḥ kaḥ? (Who is this person?) saḥ Somchai!
(Variants eṣaḥ/eṣā = 'this person', just let them pass by the ear.)"

(The formal grammatical home of these building blocks is in P19, the pronoun lesson; for now just use them. In connected speech, saḥ often sounds like sa before a following consonant — listen only, don't write; the sandhi rule comes in a later lesson.)

TPRS wrap-up: "What is the teacher doing? What about the boy? Is he speaking?" — students assemble the classroom scene using all six verbs, then chant the four story sentences together.