Kwaingo wrote:Are there any resources for learning "spoken" Pali, i.e. conversation as it may have been used in everyday conversation?
Yes, and that's what prompted me to reply that Pali was never used in that kind of "everyday" informal speech i.e. at no point of time. It is a purely literary (textual) form of the canonical language. Some Theravadan monks (particularly since the start of the common era) have tried to speak it like a natural language with varying success, however there never has been a continuous & natural spoken tradition spanning multiple generations for Pali (unlike Latin, Sanskrit, Anglo-Saxon etc).
The language we call 'Pali' is actually closely related to/synonymous with the language called Magadhi, being the language spoken in the Kingdom of Magadh or present day Bihar at the time of the Buddha.
So Magadhi was very much a spoken language, even if the form preserved in the Pali Canon is slightly different as per change in recording and recitation over the centuries.
As has been mentioned, even if the strict version as appears in the Canon was not a spoken language per se, it is close enough to spoken languages and has been used in conversational terms by monks especially from different regions for millennia.
"Therein monks, that Dimension should be known wherein the eye ceases and the perception of forms fades away...the ear... the nose...the tongue... the body ceases and the perception of touch fades away...
That Dimension should be known wherein mentality ceases and the perception of mind-objects fades away.
That Dimension should be known; that Dimension should be known."
