Dear Bill,
Welcome to the wonderful world of learning Pali!
I think the Gair book is excellent, and am currently
slowly working my way through it (as any regular on
this list already knows). However, I would be really
struggling with it if I hadn't completed the de Silva
Primer first. Gair covers a LOT of new material in
each chapter, which for a complete beginner is hard to
absorb all at once. In contrast, de Silva starts off
very slowly introducing a very small number of new
grammar items in each chapter; indeed it takes the
first 8 lessons just to get through all the cases in
the a-stem masculine nouns! So my recommendation to
you is stick with the de Silva and finish that, then
move right on to the Gair, which I expect you will
then find very rewarding.
Can't say much about the Narada course, since I
haven't used it, but probably better to stay focussed
on one book at a time.

Good luck, and have fun!
Metta, John
--- drillerbits <drillerbits@...> wrote:

> Dear Pali Friends,
>
> A few days ago, the postman delivered a copy of the
> Gair book, "A New
> Course in Reading Paali." Recently I've been
> working with the Lily
> de Silva tutorial, and I'm not sure of the best way
> to proceed.
>
> Should I complete the de Silva lessons and then move
> on to Gair?
> Switch to Gair and forget de Silva? Work through
> them both in
> parallel?
>
> To complicate matters further, I also have the
> Elementary Pali Course
> by Ven. Narada, and the tutorial guides that
> accompany it. I don't
> have a Pali dictionary; I generally use the PTS
> online dictionary.
>
> Any advice on the best approach to learning the
> language would be
> greatly appreciated.
>
> Metta,
> Bill
>
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com