Dear June, Rett and friends,

Rett is right about the rewarding feeling in learning Pali, even if
you get to know just a handful of words. And, yes, if you have any
questions about any words or a problem found in one of the texts we
are studying (or just a question related to Pali), please post it
here. Learning and sharing Pali is the main objective of this group.

Rett, can you tell us more about the index in Achim Fahs' Grammatik
des Pali? Thanks.


metta,
Yong Peng

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett wrote:
>well, i just have problems looking up meaning of words i find in the
>text....because of all the confusing conjugations....i can't remember
>which words they were at this time, but hasn't it ever happened that
>you couldn't find a meaning of a certain word because the form has
>changed?

Sometimes I spent an hour just trying to figure out one single form.
It's usually worst with verbs in my experience, weird aorists and
stuff like that. It was a very rewarding feeling to finally find the
answer though.

Another extremely useful, but hard to find, out of print book is
Achim Fahs' Grammatik des Pali which has an index of difficult to
recognize forms (schwer erkennbare formen) which refers you back to
very nice tables of the forms derived from the roots. Most of the
time, using Fahs is the easiest way for a student to find the answer
to that kind of question.

Anyhow, I can promise you that it does get easier with time. If you
wonder about a particular form you run across, don't hesitate to post
it here. There used to be a lot of posts here asking about specific
forms. I'm sure it's on-topic: at least the moderators never
complained back then :-) I love those sorts of questions and I
believe there are some others here who enjoy looking stuff up.