Learn Pali Language

What is noun declension? How are noun cases used?  Well, the inflection of nouns is called declension . Inflection is where a word changes form (spelling) to indicate its grammatical role. The individual declensions are grouped into cases, and together they form a case system. If you are at a loss, then this series of posts is for you. Lets start with some terminology. Sentence Structure -  subject  and predicate First to understand Pali we must understand how sentences are constructed. A sentence can be broken down into structural parts called phrases and each phrase plays a different role in the meaning of the sentence. A phrase is just one or more linked words that play a specific role.

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 ...

Hot News. The Digital Pali Reader is now available online as a webpage. Digital Pali Reader (alpha) ---  The remainder of this article is now out of date --- Are you struggling to install the Digital Pali Reader - especially now the DPR requires a version of Mozilla Firefox that supports  legacy extensions  to operate? Well this is installation guide will walk you through the following stages: Have the right Browser installed, Download the DPR Extensions, Load the Extensions into the Browser, Finding the Extension in the Browser The Digital Pali Reader is a most useful tool for the amateur translator. It provides a database of the Tipiṭaka in romanised script with a search facility and the inbuilt dictionaries allow for instant lookup of any word. Although, it does not provide full text translations - which is where SuttaCentral is useful - i t is well worth taking the time to install.