Dear DaveK and Nina,

like Nina, I believe that as you read more and progress, the
declensions (and conjugations) will become second nature. I believe
speakers of other Indo-European tongues would concur.

Nina mentioned context. This is so in Pali because in many of the
paradigms, you will find noun cases sharing the same declensions.
Hence, memorisation at this point becomes less helpful. Being able to
read and understand the entire sentence in its context has become more
important.

However, many people still have taken the effort to put the paradigms
into memory, which is not a bad idea if that's your way of learning.
In fact, once you have seen them all, you would realise there isn't a
lot to memorise.

As for the English-to-Pali translation, I would encourage you to go
through them, partially if not in full. Although it may be true, there
isn't any (commercial?) value learning English-to-Pali translation,
there isn't really much opportunities for Pali-to-English translators
either. Hence, I view this issue totally differently from Bhikkhu Bodhi.

I think the Pali-to-English exercise develop my analysis skill, the
ability to analyse Pali passages using a tool, which happen to be
another language, English. On the other hand, the English-to-Pali
exercise develop my synthesis skill, the ability to construct
sentences in Pali. This forces me to think in Pali, and allows me to
better appreciate the Pali sentences I read. It allows the reader to
connects with the author.

It's not so much about 'value'. If you think it's good, then go for it.

Besides, many of us, including Nina and myself, have went through the
book together and put up the solutions online. We hope someone will
come along someday to go through the solutions, and let us know of any
mistakes.

Btw, Dave, are you the one who were organising Pali study group in
your area, or was it the other Dave or someone else. Frankly, I am
getting a bit confused between you two. Would appreciate if you can do
some intro again. Thank you.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, dkotschessa wrote:

My problem is with the initial pain of learning declensions. As slow
as I seem to go, I still do not seem to have the mind for keeping
track of them. Is it a matter of hard rote memorization, practice,
context? Might someone advise me of some sort of strategy?

My second question concerns the type of exercises I am doing. Bhikkhu
Bodhi recommends only doing pali to english exercises in the DeSilva
Primer. His take is that translating in the other direction isn't
particularly useful as a skill. i.e. there are no real practical uses
for translating any kind of english texts into Pali. However I wonder
if it still isn't a useful exercise for getting familiar with the
language.

Do people find much value in translating from English into Pali?