You wrote:
Thanks. So how do people who read Chinese, Japanese, Korean, do the
Theravada chantings?? Or I guess they dont? Do they even study Pali?
or perhaps yes, but in roman characters?
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I am afraid Theravada Buddhism is very much a minority interest in those
countries since they are all Mahayana -- the Theravada lineage was not
transmitted to any of those countries, although some individual Theravadin
monks did go to China in ancient times. There is a slight degree of
interest in Theravada in Japan, as a modern import, but I would suspect that
there are fewer than a hundred people who would call themselves
Theravadins -- I don't think there are many Japanese monks who have adopted
the Theravadin Vinaya, although there are definitely a few. Mostly Pali is
just studied at universities for historical Buddhist studies. All the
Japanese text books I have seen for Pali (and Sanskrit) use the same
alphabetic romanization system that we do in the West.