Dear Ven Kum�ra,
From personal experience I recommend that one start
with the Pali Primer by Lily de Silva. This is a very
accessible introduction to the language, and provides
lots of exercise sentences for translating Pali to
English and also English to Pali. It's limitation is
that is does not use examples from the suttas in its
exercises and it's presentation of material in the
later chapters lacks a little depth.

Another advantage of it is that there is an answer key
available for checking of your answers, and both the
whole book and the key are available in Word files
online. Plus members of this list have access to a
learning file (with Input Easy) that I created, which
is good for drilling vocabulary, and past emails on
this list discuss chapters presented by Yong Peng
(which I'm glad to see he will be continuing).

The New Course in Reading Pali by Gair is an excellent
book too, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone with
no Pali experience at all. I am now working through
it (am about half way though) and find that having
completed the Pali Primer beforehand helps a lot. All
the exercise material is directly taken from the
suttas, which is a very good feature. Since you
obviously have some experience with Pali already (and
a teacher!), this may be more appropriate for you. It
does not have an answer key, but I have been posting
my answers to the files section so others can send
feedback and corrections, and this would be a useful
resource to anyone working through the book.

I don't have any personal experience with Narada's
Elementary Pali Course, but I'm guessing it's more
equivalent in level to the Pali Primer than it is to
the Reader. I'm sure others on this list can talk
about it.

Peace to you,
John

--- Kumaara Bhikkhu <venkumara@...> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Presently, we have a few starter books for learning
> Pali:
> 1. Pali Primer, Dr. Lily de Silva
> 2. A New Course in Reading Pali, James W. Gair and
> W. S. Karunatillake
> 3. An Elementary Pali Course, Ven. Narada Thera
>
> While we know that they all have their strengths and
> weaknesses, if someone were to ask you which book
> among them is the best to start with, which one
> would you recommend? And, if possible, please tell
> us why as well.
>
> If you know of another book which is better than the
> three, please feel free to tell us as well.
>
> peace
>
> Ven Kum�ra
>
>
>

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