SuttaCentral
Atha kho rājā Disampati purisaṁ āmantesi
Then, King Disampati addressed the person
Since āmantesi can be:
Could the above sentence also be:
“Then you, King Disampati, addressed the person”?
How can two verbs that consistently differ in form be the same verb? 
Do you mean that they always have exactly the same meaning?
Or that they share a root in PIE?
I read this first as “closer in meaning”, but you probably mean “closer in the sentence”?
How can ‘they’ be singular?
No, I don’t think so as the subject (king D) matches the verb (he addressed).
To make what you are suggesting probably a vocative needs to be used.
Bhavati and hoti are really the same verb.
The b drops out and the ‘ava’ reduces to ‘o’
(We covered this in G&K!)
The e that prefixes tad gives ‘this’ instead of ‘that’. Closer in proximity. ‘This right here’
Yes, the many ways “to be” is also confusing me. Probably a good topic to cover in class today
Singular “they” was the norm in English for hundreds of years until arguments for using “he” was used for ‘in general’ (which you see in old text), but now people use that less, and then we flip-flopped with “he or she”, “he/she”, “s/he” and whether to keep using “they”, and people today still use “they” to talk about someone/thing with unknown sex frequently at least in my American dialect.
I mean you can, but I’m not sure that I’m going to review it all …
Per Stephen’s answer:
A vocative would be deva or mahārāja.
They are literally the same word, like little and lil’, or like good day and g’day.
No, I mean it usually refers to something that is closer: this rather than that.
Thanks for the link, also for pointing out my spelling mistake, dear Bhante 
Sorry for forgetting … students can be such a pain …. but in Class one Sujato told us that Ajahn Brahm says Pali needs to be learnt 3 times before it becomes easy!
So
bhavati → havati → hoti
bhavasi → habasi → hosi
bhavami → havami → homi
bhavanti → havanti → honti
bhavatha → havatha → hotha
bhavāma → havāma → homa
That is very neat! … Last time around I was fully concentrated on trying to remember meanings and inflections. 
So now I am interested in why?
Well of course, in English. (I’m a feminist female English linguist. ) … But in Pali too:
Maybe I misread & Bhante wasn’t referring to Pali.
Sorry Bhante, and many thanks for your answers.
I love asking why, as well. 
evam2 etaṃ brāhmaṇa
Thank you so much! Now I understand!
Indeed yes, I was referring to the translation.
I wasn’t quite expecting a parse of the translation
Thank you for the above questions and answers. Here are a few more from the exercise of translating from English into pali which I couldn’t clarify with the exchange above:
“Eso pi rājā puriso hoti, aham pi puriso homi.”
John Kelly has it: “ayaṃ rājā manusso, aham pi manusso”.
Shouldn’t we repeat pi as when using ca? Where should it come in the phrase?
He translated “atha kho Mahāgovindo brāhmaṇo yena te khattiyā ten’ upasaíkami”
shouldn’t it be khattiye in the plural accusative? I thought he could have used the feminine plural accusative khattiyā, but te is the plural masculine t(ad) pronoun. Also, what is the meaning of yena in this context and must it necessarily be used?
I had a completely different translation for this exercise. Is this also a possible way of rendering it in pali?
“tadā kho Mahāgovindo brāhmaṇo imāni khattiye tena upasaíkami”
mā h’eva tumhe kho brāmaṇā na hotha Vāseṭṭhā
John Kelly translated as: tumhe kho attha brāmaṇā Vāseṭṭhā
Are both translations possible?
This is what’s known, sometimes, as a yena-tena construction. The destination is correctly placed in the nominative.
The ‘yena’ has the sense of ‘where’ or ‘by that way’, and the ‘tena’ is ‘there’.
So in this sentence khattiyā (nom plu) is really the subject of its own clause.
Literally something like, where those khattias were, there he approached.
I don’t see any negation here, just a statement of fact. Mr. Kelly’s translation seems precise.
I’m assuming the Pali word used for ‘’wanderer’ would be ‘paribbājaka’ which is a masculine noun.
Since tāni/etāni is a neuter pronoun it wouldn’t match.
Oh! I used samaṇā, which is also masculine plural. I’ve just checked there is also the feminine plural samaṇiyo, but no neutral that could convey the genderless notion of the English “wanderer”. In that case, if we choose the masculine nouns, could we use either the pronouns te or ime for ex.?
