Re: questions

--- In palistudy@..., srnsk@... wrote:
> Dear A.Amara, Jim and everyone
>
> Thanks krap A.Amara for the Thai translation. It's kind of funny to
see and
> read Thai in Romanized  script.   There is a thick accent in it :) 
  Remind
> me of something, are there accent marks in Pali.? Like in Thai we
have
> "ake-to-tree-catava" to make the tone and meaning of a word change.


Dear NN,

That's a major problem, isn't it, the absence of tonal marks!  And the
lack of certain Thai consonants like 'taw tao' which exists in French,
did you notice?  Also 'paw pla' as in the French 'Paris'.  I think it
also makes the Thai apply certain tonal marks to other languages also,
which sometimes makes it very distinctive to hear, especially in
French which relies on intonation very much.  When you go to the
islands and then to Canada, you will find the intonations change
radically, in France itself there are a whole range of interesting
accents from north to south, I found.  And the Swiss 'montagnards'
have theirs!


   Thai
> and Pali are quite different. In Thai there is no grammatical
gender, no
> plural form, and no tense.  Another question, why Pali in English
spelled
> with "P", in Thai from my understanding we call it "Bali"


There are several pairs that switch sounds, as I discussed with Sukin
once, and I think that the Thais are the ones who did it since as far
as I know other Pali literates in other countries all agree except for
out Thai Pali; as I found it, rather consistently we find that when we
Thais use gaw gai, or the g sound, the romanized alphabet would be k
and vice versa. Here are the pairs:

  g/k         k/g,    as in ekaggata
gh/kh       kh/gh
  c/j         j/c           javana citta
ch/jh       jh/ch
  t/d         d/t           Siddattha
th/dh       dh/th
(the consonants with the dots under I don't know quite how to
pronounce, in Thai as in English!)
  p/b         b/p           pubba kamma
ph/bh       bh/ph

Which is why most Thais would spell 'citta' as 'jitta' and 'javana' as
'chavana', I think.  And account for the mispronounciation of family
names from the old Pali transcripts with archaic pronounciations of
the words!!!  My grandfather held the title of 'Praya Wasutape' which
in English is written 'Vasudeb', for example!

I think it's great that you are learning French, it might be useful as
well as fun for you to learn different languages, because some might
even help you understand others.  For example in Thai there is the
taste 'fahd' for which I have never found an equivalent in English,
although the French have the word acre (with the 'accent
circonflex'over the a).  Which also shows you that some realities
exist without our naming them conventionally, but all conventional
terms must be based on some extant arammana through some dvara, I
think!  Exactly as TA and the Tipitaka taught!

And no matter the subject you study, even the dhamma, do remember it's
your nama and rupa doing their functions, do the best you can and
enjoy the rest with chandha if possible, and the minimum lobha!

Anumodana with your studies,
=^_^=
AA


>
> Jim, I will be in Montreal next Saturday for week to attend a
conference, and
> then I will rent a car a drive around for another 5 days.  As I can
recall,
> you are in Canada.  May I ask, where are you in Canada? I think it's
my
> privilege if I can meet with sappurisam or sappurissa, ( single
accusative or
> dative I am not sure, I guess it should be "suppurissa savane"!!
Just want to
> try to change the word for in this case number of noun, I guess). 
Does verb
> change with single or plural in Pali like in English?   I took a
look in 
> Wader and could not find where is it in the book.
>
> Thanks for your correction.
>
> Num