Hi folks,

I have been following with interest for a while now on the Yahoo Pali
group, this is my first contribution. I'm a new learner. Beginner's
mind, and all that =]

I am a big language nerd, and have studied lots of languages in the
past. I find the challenges in studying Pali to be quite similar to
the challenges in studying Latin, because they have similar
typologies.

I was wondering if anyone here has ever run across the "Grasp" method
for studying Latin?

http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/pedagogy/gr-exp.html

It seems to me that this would be very helpful for studying Pali, too.
The site describes it in great detail, but basically it works like
this: you start with a very simple phrase, say:

Agnovit.
He perceived.

Tempus agnovit.
He perceived the time.

Vocationis suae tempus agnovit.
He perceived the time of his (own) call.

You build up understanding of complex sentences by starting with small
sub-sentences which are nonetheless complete and fully grammatical. I
found that this method for some reason helped things to stick in my
mind.

Obviously it would be a pretty big undertaking to try to produce a
similar method in Pali, but I thought I would bring up the topic just
to see what folks thought.

This is a great group, very happy to have found it. =]

metta,
Pat