Dear Friends,

By way of introduction, my name is Miriam, currently based in London,
UK. I started learning Pali in February as part of a course in Buddhist
Studies and have lurked on the list for a few months, reading the
various threads with interest.

In response to John's query: starting from no knowledge of the language,
what I found helpful are the numerous short exercises in the New Pali
Course by Ven. Buddhadatta (a thread has just been initiated here for
the answers). Warder in tandem to learn the grammar and the PTS
dictionnary. And a few English grammars too since I was not at all
familiar with grammatical terms when I started.

hth, all the best
Miriam.

Sumana wrote:

> Hello John,
>
> It seems that most people looking for an introduction
> to Pali that find Warder daunting turn to Pali Primer
> by Dr. Lily de Silva. It is published by VRI,
> Vipassana Research Institute, and available for just a
> few bucks.
> That said, it may be worth your while to stick with
> Warder. Warder's book gives you more information than
> you need to complete the exercises which makes it look
> daunting. IMHO, the trick is to learn to ignore what
> you don't need to complete the exercises. For
> example, Lesson 1 would kill just about anyone's
> enthusiasm. Skip the "theory of derivation of the
> present tense stems". Skip "Vowel Gradation". Learn
> the "First Conjugation", the "Present Tense", and
> "Nominative Case"(subject of the sentence).
> The reason that I recommend this approach is that
> Warder trains you to read Pali Texts. Nothing IMHO
> does it better.
> You can always ask questions here.
>
> Good Luck!
> Sumana
>
> PS: How about those Sox.
>
> --- anukampana <anukampana@...> wrote:
>
> > my friends,
> >
> > this group is such a wonderful resource. i was
> > wondering if someone
> > might recommend which intro to pali course might be
> > best for a
> > complete novice at languages? i have warder but it
> > seems a bit
> > fast-paced for me. any help you might provide would
> > be greatly
> > appreciated.
> >
> > with metta,
> >
> > john hasemeyer
> > chicago, il
>
> * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of
> Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>.
>
>