Re: Slightly OT: Podcast Tagline in Pali

Hi Florian,

I'm afraid I'm not able to be of much help with your questions. Just a
couple of comments.

> 1. I found the indeclinable "sāgataṁ" in a dictionary, meaning "welcome",
> but
> is there an idiomatic way to say, "Welcome to ..." in Pali?  Thinking
> about it,
> it seems to be benedictive, "may you be welcome to ...", is this
> appropriate in Pali?

A.P. Buddhadatta gives an interjection "svāgataṃ" in his English-Pali
Dictionary. Forms of both svāgata and sāgata are fairly frequent in the Pali
texts although I'm hardly familiar with their usages. It seems to me that
the "welcome" in "Welcome to Conlangery" is a verb as in: (we) welcome (you)
to Conlangery. Buddhadatta gives abhinandati, sampaṭicchati, sammāneti as
transitive verbs for "welcome" but I'm not sure if any of these would work
here.

For "Conlangery" I would suggest "Bhāsakārasālā"
(language-creator-workshop).

Pali is an archaic language (like Latin) and is not normally used for
communicating in today's world as it lacks the vocabulary needed. However,
one could use its existing vocabulary for composing grammatical descriptions
of Pali, e.g., for describing the derivation of a word or the syntactical
structure of a compound or a sentence. One can find plenty of models from
which to draw on in the commentaries on the traditional grammars. Although I
haven't ventured that far yet, I think it would help to further one's
understanding of and fluency with the language.

Best wishes,

Jim