What are all the dots and accents for in the names of the poses? The poses and techniques all have Sanskrit names just as Judo techniques have Japanese names. Sanskrit is usually written using the Devanagari alphabet used in modern Hindi and other Northern Indian languages. There is a standard way to represent the Devanagari script in the Roman alphabet and the dots and accents (diacritics) are used to indicate the exact spelling of the Sanskrit. For example ṭ represents the letter ट whereas t represents त. Without the correct diacritics you don’t know the exact Sanskrit word. This is not important to most people but I like Sanskrit and I’ll introduce you to the Sanskrit terms and explain them in class. If there is enough interest, I’ll start a Sanskrit study group using the Pañcatantra as our source material.