A question on Bhikkhu Bodhi's online Pali course

[SeekingDharma]

Hello all,

As I deepen my sutta studies I think I would find great benefit in investing my time towards learning Pali. I have never spoken, or understood, a secondary language. I see there are resources available in this forum (which I have reviewed and will continue to do), and there is also the online course available through Bhikku Bodhi's teachings (http://www.bodhimonastery.com/bm/progra ... nline.html). Has anybody started learning the language through these lectures? Is it a wise way to start? Any advice on this, or any other way of learning is most welcome. Thank you!

[manas]

Hi seekingdharma,
I just ordered the text needed 'A New Course in Reading Pali: Entering the Word of the Buddha' online from Amazon. The book plus shipping cost me about 30 AU dollars. Once I receive it, I will begin the online lessons. Until then, I'm going to start working on pronounciation and a bit of the grammar.

I do not know how many (if any) people in this forum are undertaking Bhikkhu Bodhi's course, but you can count me in. Quite a few here seem to know alot of Pali already, and some seem to have much proficiency in it. If you end up purchasing the text and undertaking the lessons, there might be some way we can correspond and/or assist each other as we do the course. I'm certainly looking forward to beginning!

, m.

[d_ignat]

I already bought the course, studied the first lesson and started the second lesson. The audio files were very useful for learning more and better understanding the written course. It is also very recommended to write by hand all the pali texts in the book and their translation - it helps to better memorize the words.
A very useful resource is the Digital Pali Reder (http://pali.sirimangalo.org/), I found the passages from the book in the Tipitiaka texts and the dictionary from DPR helped me a lot.

Anyway, it is a very time consuming activity, so you need a lot of free time for learning and studying

[Ketoujin23]

Hi,
I too have been studying Pali using Bhikku Bodhi's on-line course. I recently purchased "Pali - Buddha's Language" by Kurt Schmidt and alternate between the course, the Schmidt book, and two Pali primers by Lily De Silva and Narada Thera. I find the De Silva book to be the most straight-forward in terms of actually learning both grammar and vocabulary but the Schmidt book has value of its own in giving the student a context for the language as it is actually used in the Pali Canon. I am a long way from being able to use the knowledge gained from the two aforementioned e-book primers in reading canonical texts - though upon re-reading an old bi-lingual Pali/English copy of the Dhammapada I increasingly recognize vocabulary and can identify noun declensions and verb cases - but I am trying to forge ahead.

As a related side-project I'm currently working on memorizing the Panca-Sila and most of the Pairs in the Dhammapada having gotten the Ti-Sarana pretty much down.

Best wishes to everyone else who is currently in the throes of Pali self-study.

Best,

Gunnar