Declension is the addition to the Noun stems of suffixes which indicate grammatical information, such as: case, number & gender. In this post we're going to look at different ways to identify these suffixes. I haven’t found a simple way of achieving this. (But that's part of the fun). As a result I tend to use a combination of tools and methods. However the arrival of the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary (DPD) has made this much easier. Anyway check out my 5 ways to analyse an inflected Pali word. Rote table look-up Search the Dictionary SuttaCentral Use a Reader's in-built Dictionary The Digital Pāḷi Dictionary Noun stems in Pāli are regularly grouped into two divisions, those that end in: Vowels: -a, -ā, -i, -ī, -u, -ū, (o) Consonants, -ar, -ī/in, -an, -at/ant, -as & -us By far the most end in vowels I'm going to concentrate on these, in this post although the methods below encompass them all. 1 Rote table look-up The tradition method of te...
Pali language grammar tutorials. Learn to read the Pali language for yourself.