I am not sure which language these words are from, but they are very useful words. I was introduced to them at a conference today:

Upaguru - The teacher inside you

Prasha - Questions to which you know the answer

Pariprasha - Questions to which you don't know the answer

"Guru" is from Sanskrit so I'd guess they are all from Sanskrit or a modern language like Hindi.

They are Sanskrit. According to the Monier-Williams dictionary, upaguru is the name of a king, 'assistant teacher', or 'near a teacher' (guru literallyu means 'heavy', it is related to gravity); prāś 'asking, questioning' (from prach which is related to German fragen 'to ask'); and, I couldn't find pariraśa, but there is pariprach 'to ask a person about something, interrogate' and paripraśna 'question, interrogation'.

I see two possibilities: (1) somebody made up some terms from existing Sanskrit words, or (2) somebody took existing Sanskrit words and gave them new meanings. I couldn't find the final two terms, but Thomas Ashley-Farrand (link) uses the first one in a similar sense to your deifinition.

Kalleh:

They may be fun words, but useful? Only to people at your conference, I suspect.

At least that's my preflection.

upa means "towards, near to; under, below", cognate with up. Sanskrit upara "lower; later; nearer; m. the nether stone (on which Soma is pounded)" is apparently the source of opal.

quote:

upa means "towards, near to; under, below"

As in the Hindu scriptures the Upanishads.

From Wikipedia:

quote:

The Sanskrit term upanishad derives from upa- (near), ni- (down) and sad (to sit), that is "sitting down near" a spiritual teacher (guru) in order to receive instruction

EDIT: Useless IE 6.0 can't understand many special characters, so I've replaced the character in Wikipedia with sh.

quote:

They may be fun words, but useful? Only to people at your conference, I suspect.

At least that's my preflection.

Often in education, Valentine, we refer to one's inner teacher. I suppose it's similar to the "inner voice." The word comes from Sanskrit, but the concept of the inner teacher also comes from the Quakers and more specifically, Parker Palmer. I can only say that the discussion using these words was inspiring. However, obviously I can't post a whole morning's discussion here, so I can see where my comments are a bit out of context.

BTW, this was a different discussion from the one where the physician was talking about preflection. The discussion on upaguru was led by Dr. Usha Satish, and here is an example of some of her work.

Inner teacher is fine. Use it and you will be somewhat understood, even outside the teaching profession.

But how many will understand upaguru?

I suppose the same people who understand epicaricacy. Or sophia. Or phronesis. Not many. You are correct.

I did speak with Usha today about "prasha" and "pariprasha," and she says she is not that familiar with Sanskrit, and she is not sure if they're from that language or from another that she mentioned (I can't remember it). She said she'd be very interested to find out more about the words, and she is going to send me some more information.

When I asked the Chinese wife of my English-language student what her husband was doing, she said, "He's reading his computer."

.... and the discourse went on from there.

I would not have said, "He's reading his computer." Would you ? What would I have said? What would you have said?
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Seeking a verb to indicate what a lot of us do most of the time. Careful !!

What I hear most often, but would never use, is "He's on his computer." Even "He's at his computer" would be better.

In my case, people just say "What he's always doing."