Hi, Gunar and Lennart!
I think that a revived colloquial Pali could be used at least for discussing Dhamma topics as has been done in the past. Someone has told me that Lamaist monks use for such purpose Old Tibetan which is quite different from the spoken language. Looking at the abundant Pali literature from times when the language was not spoken already - not only the classical Commentaries but also the most recent works of scholar monks from past two centuries - one is left with the impression that these authors could speak Pali fluently if needed.
There is ashrams in India where people are trained to talk Sanskrit without any other language medium. It would be interesting if some similar experiments has been made in Theravada Buddhist countries, but I am not aware of such projects. If someone knows something about that, please, let me know - I would be interested.
With metta,
Ardavarz
--- On Sun, 5/2/10, Lennart Lopin <novalis78@...> wrote:
From: Lennart Lopin <novalis78@...>
Subject: Re: [Pali] Re: Pali Skype Group
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, May 2, 2010, 4:08 PM
>
>
> The basis is different, though. Pali is much more specialized. Both Latin
> and Sanskrit have been used by several religious/philosoph ical schools, as
> well as for secular purposes, but all Pali literature is in some way
> connected with Theravada Buddhism.
>
>
Well, Pali is already being used as a means of communication between
Burmese, Sri Lankan and Thai monks (Even though English is replacing that in
many cases). Pali was a living language at one time - many of the colloquial
expressions/ phrases and day to day vocabulary are there. If someone
standardizes contemporary vocabulary (take for instance Buddhadatta' s
attempt in his English-Pali dictionary) then I don't see any reason why you
could not learn or teach how to use Pali in a revived spoken form. I think
it is not so much a question of how or if but rather why. If someone sees
enough reasons to do so and has enough time and skill it should not be a
problem, especially looking at the very effective methods developed in
recent decades to revive spoken Latin (i.e. seminars where people go to and
try to talk only in Latin, improving their impromptu Latin knowledge by
being forced to talk in that language).
Anyway, not really that important, but an interesting way of deepening one's
Pali knowledge.
metta,
Lennart
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