About Learn Pali

This blog is to help those wishing to make a first stab at translating the Pāli language & scriptures.

Learning Pāli is not necessarily any harder than learning a modern language. Of course it demands time and effort and the more you put it the quicker and more successful the process will be.

There are many ways to approach it. Some people wish to learn the spoken language in order to chant. And some wish merely to be able to read the Pāli canon. My approach as a beginner is to stick to translating, simplifying the process as much as possible.

[If you wish to learn the spoken language then this website will only be of limited use to you as I will ignore phonetics and pronunciation - though, I have included a playlist for the alphabet sounds on my Learn Pāli YouTube channel.]

Now the student of Pāli, once they have progressed past the initial so called Pāli Primers, will face some major learning challenges. I started this blog to record my learning and also hopefully it will be a resource to help others as I highlight my solutions to the difficulties I've encountered.

One issue I've found learning from the Pāli grammar guides available is the use of technical language. I have endeavoured to explain the grammatical terms as I have come across them. In fact, one of the best things you can do before attempting Pāli is to read through a basic English grammar guide first and familiarise yourself with the terms and concepts.

Being a classical language, the student of Pāli is faced with learning many grammatical tables for declension and conjugation. As I myself, struggle to learn these table by rote I've tried my best to avoid the need to memorise them and instead focus on how the language works. Declension and vocabulary can always be looked up and by doing so I hope the tables and vocab. will become familiar through repeated use. And there are other tools out there that already help with memorisation. So you won't find lists of vocabulary to learn on this blog as that is what dictionaries are for! Although I do present tables of the inflections...

Another major issue has been that the text books tend to mix technical terms from Latin, Sanskrit and classical Pāli grammars. Indeed many if not all of them assume the student has learnt Sanskrit or Latin previously! This is because Pāli and Sanskrit are related and the 19th century Europeans who introduced Pāli to the West imitated Latin textbooks to present Pali, presuming their Victorian audience to already have an education in Latin, Greek, or both. It would seem, the teaching of Pali has not yet overcome this stage of development! However, the Pāli language can be learnt by anyone without any previous knowledge of classical languages and again I have endeavoured to explain terminology as I have encountered it.

The many intro primers and Pali grammar guides out there have, I think, resulted in a learning gap between the rudimentary primers and the technical and complex (especially Warder’s) grammar guides. They do not specifically deal with the issues of learning to translate Pāli for oneself - which is my main reason for this blog. However some are essential references and I encourage their use, seeing this blog as a supplement rather than an alternative.

So this blog is both a record of my learning and hopefully a guide for others. You can search for a subject or start from the beginning.

I must stress that I am not an expert by any means. I have no academic background in Pāli or any other language for that matter. As such, these posts should all carry the warning that they are to my best knowledge having read a few guide books...

I apologize if I lead anyone astray. Please feel free to comment to correct mistakes, or add information etc.

Metta.

Youtube: youtube.com/@LearnPali Facebook: facebook.com/Learn-Pali-624141338085952

What is Pali Language? A little history

In all these grammar tutorials we have never stopped to ask: What is Pali?” “What does the word mean?” “What are the origins of Pali? And this is what we will investigate in this post.... What is Pali & Who Speaks it? Well, let's get the obvious answer out of the way: Pali is an ancient Middle Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language, in which, the scriptures of Theravada school of Buddhism - or Tipiṭaka - have been preserved and passed down. True. Today Pali is studied mainly to gain access to Theravada Buddhist scriptures, and is frequently chanted in a ritual context. But when we say a ' language ', most languages are named either after a population or a region, and we have no evidence of a region called Pali or even a population of Pali speakers... Along side this, nowhere in the Pali canon itself is there a mention of a language called Pali!

Sutta Number to PTS reference converter

Easily look up PTS references in the Sutta Piṭaka. [New expanded coverage tables. Includes alternate numbering. Search accepts space, comma or period separated numbers, case insensitive, diacritic insensitive.] Quick Jump Table PTS Vol Dīgha Nikāya (DN) D i , D ii , D iii Majjhima Nikāya (MN) M i , M ii , M iii Saṁyutta Nikāya (SN) S i , S ii , S iii , S iv , S v Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN) A i , A ii , A iii , A iv , A v Go to Khuddaka Nikaya (KN) ( New! KN ref converter ) Use the quick jump table above; Note: For Vol. i of SN, there are two sets of PTS page numbers for each sutta. This is because the L. Feer editions differs from Somaratne 1999. Or type a Sutta number or name into the search boxes below to search that column of the table!

Pali Alphabet & using the PED Dictionary

What is the Pali Alphabet? How is it arranged? How do you use a Pali dictionary? Well, the first thing to note is that Pāli is written in many different scripts. As the buddhist canon travelled, local people used either Indian scripts or switched to their own local scripts. For more on local scripts see here . But for now we are just interested in the Romanized Pali alphabet. This runs Vowels first, then consonants. as follows: a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, e, o (ṃ*) k, kh, g, gh, (ṅ) c, ch, j, jh, ñ ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, (ḍh), (ṇ) t, th, d, dh, n p, ph, b, bh, m y, r, l, (ḷ), (ḷh), v, s, h [Note: the letters in brackets have no entries in the dictionary.] Pali is a phonetic language so each entry above represents a single sound. Every letter always has the same pronunciation regardless of its context, so no letter has more ...

Learn Pali: Best way to start? 5 Tips to make it easy

Once people have answered the question: "Why learn Pali?" The next query is: "How do I learn Pali?" Here’s the way I suggest you begin with your study of Pali. Build foundations for language learning Start at the right level Stick with it Build vocabulary Make use of the Pali language tools 1 Build foundations for language learning One thing that you really should have before beginning to learn Pali is a basic understanding of general grammatical terms and concepts. Many of the Pali language grammar guides seem to assume you have studied Sanskrit or Latin before. If you haven’t, and you really don’t know the difference between a subject and an object, or the meanings of such terms as nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, or declension and conjugation - then perhaps you should spend some time studying English grammar. I found that even though I'm a native English sp...

PTS reference converter: Khuddaka Nikaya

Easily look up PTS references in the Khuddaka Nikaya. (Or look up PTS references in the first four Nikayas ) The Khuddaka Nikaya is the fifth Nikaya known as Collection of Minor Texts , it consists of 15 to 18 books depending on tradition. I beleive, the original Pali Canon has 15 books while the Thai edition has 17 and the Burmese edition 18 books. These then have been arranged and numbered in a couple of different ways.

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