Dear John,

Thank you very much for your quick reply and sorry for those quite
easy questions. Buddhadatta's grammatical explanations are sometimes
a bit short and I am not yet proficient enough in Pali and familiar
enough with Warder or Duroiselle to research the answers myself.
It's true that these kind of sentences are quite artificial but I
think they serve quite well the purpose of integrating some
grammatical concepts.

I am very impatient though to start the study of a book that uses
more examples of the Pali Canon. I don't think I want to tackle now
the second part of Buddhadatta, especially now that my teacher Ven.
Sumangala has left. What would you suggest? Do you think I should
start Warder at this point? I do sometimes browse through "A new
course in reading Pali" by Gair & Karunatillake but I find it hard
to translate the texts at the beginning of each lesson with the help
of the grammatical explanations given. Maybe this book would be
perfect with the help and guidance of a teacher.

With Metta,

Florent

> Dear Florent,
>
> > Could anybody help me with the following questions:
>
> I'll have a shot at your two questions ...
>
> > Is it ok in Pali to have "imissaa" not relating to any noun as

in the

> > following sentence. Doesn't it sound a bit rude, to write "the
> > daughters of this one..."
> >
> > 3.Imissaa dhiitaro tamhaa vanamhaa imaani phalaani aahari.msu,

aññaa

> > naariyo taani khaaditu.m ga.nhi.msu.
> > [of] this / daughters / [from] that / forest / these fruits /

brought

> > / other / women / them / to eat / took
> > The daughters of this woman brought these fruits from that

forest,

> > other women took them to eat.
>
> Yes, it seems OK to me. Obviously this is a sentence out of

context

> (as most artificial exercise questions are) and if it was a "real"
> passage for translation, the object of "imassa" would have been
> mentioned immediately prior. So, I don't think it's rude.
>
> > I would also like to ask again the following question about the
> > passive voice:
> >
> > I am now translating some sentences using the passive voice such

as

> > EX26 sentence 12 (p86):
> >
> > 12.The rice cooked by the slave woman is eaten by her son and

brothers.

> > odano / pakko / daasiyaa / bhuñjiiyati / tassaa / puttena / ca /
> > bhaatarehi
> > Daasiyaa pakko odano tassaa puttena bhaatarehi ca bhuñjiiyati.
> >
> > Since pakko is a past participle I turned back a few pages and

found a

> > very similar sentence in EX19 (p61) which I translated:
> >
> > 14.The rice given to them was eaten by the slaves and the

beggars.

> > odano / dinno / tesaana.m / bhutta.m / daasehi / ca / yaacakehi
> > Tesaana.m dinno odano daasehi ca yaacakehi ca bhutto.
> >
> > Obviously this sentence is also in the passive but at that time

this

> > notion had not been introduced yet so I used the past participle
> > bhutta. Is this translation correct? Should the "was" be

translated as

>
> Yes, that translation is correct. The past participle is often

used

> in a passive sense and auxiliary verbs like "was" ard "is" that are
> necessary in English are not required in the Pali.
>
> With metta,
> John
> >
>