Hello Chela,

Please send my regards to Venerable Sumangala. He is the one who
introduced me to Pali when I used to live in the Philippines. We
started together working on Venerable Buddhadatta's book. I am very
grateful to Venerable Sumangala for having introduced me to the Pali
language. Don't give up your studies. You will see that after a lot of
efforts and more or less time it starts to get very rewarding!

Regarding the pronunciation, I have done many recording of Ven.
Sumangala's voice. If you want I could send you those files. I am sure
Venerable would agree.

With Metta,

Florent

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Maradhita Kumari" <schlurpmann@...> wrote:
>
> hello!
>
> I'm chela sanchez, from the Philippines. i'm a new Pali student. i
> have just started to study a few weeks ago. A Sri Lankan monk is
> teaching me, but we do not meet that often enough. so i'm basically
> studying on my own.
>
> so far, the only difficulty that i encounter is the pronunciation of
> the words. my native language has only 5 vowel sounds, all of which
> are open and long vowels. so the difficulty lies in the
> pronunciation of the short vowels.
>
> as for the grammar, i have not much difficulty, as i have learned
> latin, which is very useful as a foundation to the word inflexions.
>
> anyway, since i do not often meet with my Pali teacher, he told me
> to practice writing and reading pali using the Sinhala script. its
> not that difficult. i just need some time getting used to the
> script.
>
> that's my experience of pali so far.
>
> Many buddhists in my country are saying that learning pali is a
> waste of time. but i think they are just turned off because they
> find it difficult to learn this beautiful language. for me, no
> language is difficult if you find it beautiful and deep with
> meanings. i have tried to learn different language. pali is the
> most challenging so far. but its difficulty will not stop me from
> learning this.
>
> anyway, i hope that by joining this group, i'd be able to learn pali
> quickly.
>
>
> metta,
> chela sanchez
>