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Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:03 am
by cooran
Hello all,

This is a thread in which to discuss The Pali Primer chapters authored by Lily de Silva, M.A., Ph.D.

Those interested are welcome to join in at any time.

The book is on-line here:
http://www.vri.dhamma.org/publications/ ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Be sure to download relevant fonts.

It is anticipated we will be studying/discussing one chapter each week.

metta
Chris

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:15 am
by Ben
Thanks Chris
I'll get onto it.

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:31 am
by Jechbi
Help! I have Windows Vista and I'm not so good with these new-fangled computer thingies. How do I download the fonts? The directions provided on the site don't work for me. :thanks:

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:50 am
by cooran
Hello Jechbi, all,

Our Bhikkhus may be able to help us.
I notice that Bhikkhu Pesala has this link in his signature:
http://www.aimwell.org/Fonts/fonts.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Have a look....

metta
Chris

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:35 am
by Ben
Yes, I have vista too. We'll have to investigate how to install new fonts on this system and post the instructions here.

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:48 am
by Dhammanando
As the vri fonts don't work well for Macintosh users I thought it would be best to download the study files, convert them to rtf files with unicode formatting and then e-mail them to anyone interested. I'll do the work this evening, so pm me with your e-mail address for a copy of the files.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:51 am
by Ben
For Jechbi and anyone else on non-Macs and running vista:
To install a font
Click to open Fonts.

Click File, and then click Install New Font.

If you don’t see the File menu, press ALT.

In the Add Fonts dialog box, under Drives, click the drive where the font that you want to install is located.

Under Folders, double-click the folder containing the fonts that you want to add.

Under List of fonts, click the font that you want to add, and then click Install.
EDIT: And it works!

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:30 am
by pt1
Hi all,

If anyone's having difficulties with online version, I found a downloadable pdf version here. It also has a vocabulary with added burmese and khmer scripts, if there's anyone here from those parts of the world.

The only difference I've noticed so far is that it uses Unicode, so 2 romanised letters are written differently:
-"n with a dot above it" in VRI version becomes "n with left leg curved" in the pdf
-"m with a dot" in VRI becomes "n with the right leg curved".
:smile: I hope this is making sense.

Also, on that website, there are also two other Pali manuals in pdf (by Narada and Duroiselle), aslo upgraded with extra scripts, as well as a lot of info on pali in different countries which might be interesting to experts here.

Best wishes

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:38 am
by pt1
Also, I think Velthius Scheme might be useful since we'll be typing a lot without diacritics.

Image

And the explanation from BPS:
This scheme was originally developed in 1991 by Frans Velthuis for use with his "devnag" Devanagari font, designed for the TEX typesetting system (see http://www.ctan.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Pali and Sanskrit scholars have since adopted it as a standard technique in Internet correspondence (see, for example, the » Pali Text Society and the Journal of Buddhist Ethics). In the Velthuis scheme two basic rules are observed:

• Double the vowels, punctuate the consonants
• Long vowels (those usually typeset with a macron (bar) above them) are doubled: aa ii uu

• For consonants, the diacritic mark precedes the letter it affects. Thus, the retroflex (cerebral) consonants (usually typeset with a dot underneath) are with a dot before: .t .th .d .dh .n .l .s .h. The pure nasal (niggahiita) m, also typeset with a dot underneath, is .m. The guttural nasal (n with a dot above) is represented as "n . The palatal nasal (n with a tilde) is ~n. The Sanskrit palatal s (s with an acute) is "s
Of the plain-ASCII methods, this one is the most precise, as it carefully preserves the significance of each special character. To the uninitiated, however, the sight of all those doubled vowels and misplaced periods is utterly bewildering, perhaps leaving them to wonder if someone's keyboard is broken.
Examples

paa.naatipaataa verama.nii sikkhaa-pada.m samaadiyaami

itihida.m aayasmato ko.n.daññassa, añña-ko.n.dañño tveva naama.m, ahosiiti

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:20 am
by pt1
Hi, regarding pronunciation, this online dictionary has details for each letter on the title page.

I just realized I've been pronouncing citta and cetasika wrong all these years - it should be pronounced chitta and chetasika :jumping:

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 5:58 am
by Dhammanando
Greetings,

As Dhamma Wheel's settings have just been tweaked to permit the uploading of zip and rtf files I am uploading a file containing the html pages of de Silva's Primer, converted to Unicode. Should you find the diacritics not displaying correctly on your browser, go to VIEW in your browser menu, select CHARACTER ENCODING, and then select Unicode-8.
DeSilva.zip
(103.57 KiB) Downloaded 358 times
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:13 am
by Ben
Thank you Ajahn!

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:16 pm
by Branko
So what is the plan?
I translated sentences from the lesson one.
And? Lesson two?

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:52 pm
by cooran
Hello Branko, all,

Good question. In the previous thread about Studying Pali, the discussion ended with the decision to study this book, and pt1's last post there:
pt1 wrote:Hi Chris,

That sounds good - Pronunciation chapter this week, Lesson 1 on Sunday.

Was wondering, perhaps we should start a dedicated thread for Pali Primer only, because later on we might go on to another book, so it'll be easier to track the topic for us and others later?

Best wishes
How about this? I'll put up the correct answers on a Sunday evening (Oz time), and anyone not understanding or even disagreeing can post - hopefully Ajahn and others well-versed in Pali can adjudicate. Then we can take the a week to learn the next chapter's rules and vocabulary, do the homework and go round again ... what does everyone (including Ajahn) think of that plan?

metta
Chris

Re: Pali Primer Study Group (Lily de Silva)

Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:45 pm
by Dhammanando
Hi Chris,
Chris wrote:what does everyone (including Ajahn) think of that plan?
It sounds fine to me.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu