Do you have any advice on how to learn Pali without a teacher? I've never learned another language and don't know how.

Answer 1

Introduction to Pali by A.K.Warder is quite famous and that's what I'm planning to read as well.

Access to insight has an answer key for the exercises in the book.

Answer Key to Warder's 'Introduction to Pali'

Comments

No, not Warder! Anything but that :)

Honestly, I tried teaching people his way, and it's like pulling teeth. He completely throws out the window all established methods for learning Indic languages in order to make it palatable for Westerners... it doesn't work, from my experience.

The only sure way to learn an Indic language is memorize, memorize, memorize. One paradigm a week would be a good pace. That's how we learned Sanskrit, and that's why Pali was so easy when I started learning it.

---

lol when I found the book I was thinking,'ahhh finally I have a one-stop resource to learn Pali'.

I'll still give it a try for the sake of pitting Tamil against Pali :)

---

Well, for you it's probably not a problem, but for someone unfamiliar with Indic languages, I can't think Warder would do much good. Didn't work for me, anyway.

---

Tamil (really spelt Thamizh) is Dravidian!

Not sure if I can get any purchase on the situation. You know, Tamilnadu is the only state where Hindi is not able to gain any status whereas one can survive in any other state in India with knowledge of Hindi. They are so conservative and conceited about their language as the name of the state suggests.

---

Oops... well, good luck with Warder then :) it's a good reference book, anyway, since it is quite thorough. Just not so useful for learning the language. imho.

Answer 2

Charles Duroiselle's grammar would be a good start, but you need to know what to memorize, not just read it. Then you need to practice it. His grammar is in the DPR and it may be possible with both resources to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, so to speak :) It would be interesting to see if, given the DPR and Duroiselle's grammar, one could actually learn Pali on one's own.

Answer 3

I just bought A New Course in Reading Pāli, by Gair & Karunatillake and I found it quite useful. A couple of years ago I studied about 10 lessons from Pali Primer, but I found them quite boring :) Anyway, the knowledge aquired from that book was useful, too. And, of course, the DPR was extremely useful. Also there are audio files by Bhikkhu Bodhi for the lessons in A New Course... at http://bodhimonastery.com/bm/programs/pali-class-online.html
Sorry about my English; not very good, but I hope you understand what I'm writing :)