[palistudy] Re: Creating a Pali Tipitaka and Pali Literature Wiki-space

Hi Eisel,

>
>
>I really don't think it takes more than two weeks, if you already know one
>Asian Pali script, to learn a second or a third one.  Developing excellent
>penmanship requires more patience --the hand is slower than the mind.

Two weeks sounds about right, putting in a concentrated hour or two a day. But another reading skill you haven't mentioned is developing 'instant recognition' of words in the new script (as opposed to spelling your way through words). This requires extensive reading to develop. This skill is vital for being able to skim quickly through texts looking for certain words or grammatical forms, or for quickly taking in a table of contents.

I've tried to develop ways to train myself in this particular skill in the Asian scripts I read. Re-studying the nominal and verbal grammatical paradigms in the target script is one of several ways to build up this 'instant recognition' ability.

However, even though I've put a great deal of time into reading Sinhalese editions and have come to enjoy the script greatly, if I'm working under a time-limit (as is often the case) I rely on a Romanized version for skimming, if it's available. I learned to read roman characters as a child and I believe the brain hardwires languages and scripts learned at that age in a more efficient way than later-learned languages and scripts. So for me it would be silly not to take advantage of my native competence in the Roman script when performing tasks where I'm optimized to use it.

>The Roman-only approach (for this kind of digital resource) is problematic
>from two different perspectives:
> (1) It actually removes the scholars from the source text by a significant
>degree of separation/alienation,

This is a bit vague. How is the scholar reading a text in roman characters more alienated than a scholar reading the text in a script he learned as an adult? That could also be called 'alienation', except that I don't see any reason to put a negative sounding word on it.

As for putting SE Asian readers at a disadvantage, what do you think of the 6th council CD put out by VRI. There you can choose between Roman, Sinhalese, Burmese etc, so the reader can pick whatever is most comfortable. In a digital resource it ought to be easy to provide these sorts of conversion tools.


> On balance, I think that a great deal is lost in Romanization (and current
>methods are problematic; the reduction of euphonic elisions/combinations to
>individuated words separated by nasal sounds is a real desecration of the
>source texts --

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you referring to things of this sort:

Sinhalese version: < padanti >, romanized version:< pada.m ti >, where the dental nasal has been standardized to an anusvara?

I agree that this uglifies the text to a certain degree though I'm not sure how it is to be construed as a 'desecration'. The reason for this, I'm almost certain, has been to aid the reader who might initially confuse the form with a third person plural indicative ending. Sinhalese printed books often also 'desecrate' the text by punctuating it like this "pada"nti, precisely in order to aid the reader in this regard. Is it less of a 'desecration' when Sinhalese editors do this sort of thing?

In any case, it ought to be possible to retain the dental nasal in a romanized edition: padan ti. This would be my preference. Standardizing spelling isn't a goal anymore when making romanized editions (at least I hope it isn't).


>and this whole business of inserting the apostrophe (')
>creates ambiguities in Romanized Pali that simply aren't there in original
MS).

Could you provide examples? Because for the most part I'd think that it resolves ambiquities rather than introducing them. This could, however, be a bad thing since if the person resolving an ambiguity has made the wrong decision, his or her intervention could obscure the actual meaning of the text. It would have been better to leave the ambiguity in the edition and allow the reader to decide.



best regards,

/Rett