Thank you so much.
It’s nice that we can apply what we learn to ‘real life’ apart from translating the suttas. 
3 Likes
I have to thank you, the Pali study group! I have been more of less following your discussions here, and although I am not participating in the class they are of great benefit for me. Not the least has been the mention of the DPD/GoldenDict which since I installed it serves me a lot!
So a bit THANK YOU for holding these discussions as public threads! 
5 Likes
And if you want to go even more vulgar, @Dheerayupa there’s this insult recorded in the Vinaya:
Notice especially the -āpe- infix added to the final verb to make it causative (so this post remains relevant to this chapter 
)
4 Likes
To turn to a more mundane matter:
I am having difficulty with the word sammanāgato. The best I can do is sammana = honour + agato = not gone. But I can’t really make this add up to “endowed,” which is how Brahmali and Kelly translate it.
1 Like
one m, two n! Spelling!
samannāgato = saṃ anu ā √gam; literally “going together” or perhaps “preceding together with”
2 Likes
Thank you so much!
(You wouldn’t believe how many times I did variations on my search … and didn’t see the obvious.)
EDIT: I’ve now found I can blame the teacher 
I copy-pasted direct from John (Warning!)
2 Likes
Ahhhh! Eureka 
Thank you Stephen and John. When I used DPD to search pācayato it didn’t recognize it or its root. So then I went old-school and Googled it. John, I could not have deconstructed this on my own (namely the pg.79 reference and extrapolating to recognize pācayato).
1 Like
wait did you answer this or Bhante?
The U Chicago version of PED is usually good at searching through entries, still the gold standard.
1 Like
Thank you!!! That’s what I’ll use as backup now.
1 Like
I am happy to know this from Warder:
Despite the mechanical appearance of the causative in theory, as a kind of tense of the ordinary verb, in practice THE MEANING AND USAGE OF CAUSATIVE VERBS IS HIGHLY IDIOMATIC AND EACH ONE REQUIRES CAREFUL ATTENTION (capitalization per Warder – ha ha, not really).
Therefore it will take countless readings of pāli passages using the causative for me to tuly understand it.
2 Likes
I have question regarding this Pali sentence:
brāhmaṇo mante vācesi
For “vācesi” DPD gives:
So if we take vācesi as the aor 3rd sg of vācesi then we will translate that sentence to something like:
Brahmin recited prayers.
However, if we take vācesi as the pr 2nd sg of vāceti (causative form of vacati) then we will have another meaning which is “to teach” (or “cause to speak”).
The problem is: this conjugation is 2nd sg, not 3rd sg. So, in summary, I don’t understand how Ven. Brahmali translated it with the 3rd sg past tense instead as:
The brahmin taught the hymns.
In note #7, Ven. Brahmali told us to look into PED. However, I can only see this entry for vāceti
1 Like
Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t ‘vācesi’ the 3rd per. sing. aorist of vāceti? ‘He taught/ recited’.
(Sigmatic aorist is often used for causative verbs. See Duroiselle 418-422)
3 Likes
I don’t know about that part “‘vācesi’ the 3rd per. sing. aorist of vāceti”. Both DPD and PED didn’t tell me.
It seems that I was confused with the phrase “caused to speak” in note #7 of Ven. Brahmali. I thought that he was referring to “causative form of vacati which is vāceti” when I look at DPD, it turns out that he didn’t mean to say that. Following note #7’s direction, PED didn’t give anything for me for “vācesi” but only gave “vāceti”, so it made me even more confused.
Anyway, you have given me answer. If I take vācesi to be “aor 3rd sing of vāceti” then it is no more problem. 
Thanks a lot
I’m sorry you’re confused. Did you have a look at the Duroiselle Grammar to see how this form of the aorist is constructed?
(Please remember that dictionary entries are given as present indicative 3rd person singular. If other tense forms aren’t given, it usually means the verb follows a typical paradigm. )
The present indicative form of ‘vac’ is vadati.
See PED for ‘vatti’, which also includes a definition for the causative ‘vāceti’.
1 Like
Ha ha, take a nice lie down!
I think that would be better, I want to keep going for now. I think we’re reaching that point where a slower pace and more reflective ongoing discussions will become fruitful, but for the few lessons remaining to me I want to keep covering ground.
Bring them up here.
No worries, thanks for letting me know.
Hmm, I can’t speak to the Thai connotations, but kalyāṇa in the Pali most commonly means “morally good”, it is the standard opposite to pāpa. Maybe this is a derived sense from “beautiful”, but in any case in Pali context it is the main one.
Ha ha, meditation can cause them to go away!
Now that is truly a question whose profundity escapes me!
Excellent!
Hmm, this is probably right. It’s one of those details that is often said, but I haven’t actually researched it myself, so I can’t confirm.
If that’s the original title, it’s clearly chosen to be both crude and a neologism. “Whore” is a Germanic rather than Latinate word (like prostitute), so wouldn’t you want a Thai word rather than an Indic?
Ha ha, excellent point.
Oh no! That condemns you to a future of having to read the Buddha’s words in the original language for many years!
DPD has the entry, but it lacks the “grammar” section that would make it explicit. Hopefully that will be added in time.
5 Likes
In a way, what makes a verb ‘causative’ is something that happens ‘behind the scenes’, and not really all that important to a beginning Pali student. It can be just another verb to look up and use the definition of.
So there really isn’t any reason to stress over it.
Especially for English language students, where ‘causatives’ are not really a thing. (To ‘fell’ a tree is a rare example).
2 Likes
Verbs in English (like in French) often contain spaces: “am going”, “did go”, “will go”, “had gone”…
Actually one good place to study causatives is the Vinaya, where you often find phrases like, khaṇeyya vā khaṇāpeyya vā, “should they dig or have someone dig”.
3 Likes
I’m not sure these tenses that use auxiliary verbs are to be considered ‘causative’.
1 Like