More time-efficient way to learn Pāli?

[vivittagiri]

I’ve been working my way through “A New Course in Reading Pāli,” the past few months, and while I am a big fan of its presentation and the option to start reading actual sutta quotations right off the bat, I’m probably approaching it the wrong way.

I’ve been using Anki to do flash cards of all the terms given in each unit. Memorizing a handful a day, I am progressing VERY slowly through the book since there are so many terms. Thus, my progress through the lessons has been at a snail’s pace. As much as I want to memorize the terminology, at this rate I’ll be dead (and unenlightened) by the time I get to the end of the book. The thought of reading Warder’s book after this is terrifying

I imagine that this is not the intended approach.

My goal is to be able to sit down with the suttas and more or less be able to read fluently without having to look up too many words. If this is rather ambitious or just plain impractical, do let me know how you’d suggest I proceed learning instead. Sooner is better in terms of getting to be able to read actual suttas in full. Thank you!

[Nei]

I have a similar aspiration. I have studied online with Aleix Falques Ruiz PhD on the Yogic Studies Online platform and completed 10 months of study of elementary grammar. There will a reading course soon. In the meantime I am taking the Pali course of Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies to maintain or increase my skills. It is quite user friendly and the only caveat is that you need to download Pali diacritics keyboard software. I would encourage anyone interested to use it. It is done by Richard Gombrich’s team. For translation practice I use Bodhi’s Reading the Buddha’s Discourses in Pali. Wish you success.

[Pasanna]

I have had this question in mind for years and am slowly working on a ‘thing’ based on word and phrase frequency. It’ll be a fair while until it’s available publicly though.
As part of my research, I discovered Learning with Texts, which might be a useful progression for those who have done A New Course in Reading Pali. You can import your own text in any language, in this case Pali, and practice reading the words in context. It highlights words you are less familiar with and you can rate them as you work through the text.

I also created this deck with anki-web (there are 2 ankis!) which has the top 200 most frequently used pali words. It includes audio. I’m happy to receive feedback on this deck.

Edited to add an image from LWT

[Snowbird]

Obligatory…

https://suttacentral.net/an3.15/en/sujato

[Thanuttamo]

I remember at least one study that concluded one of the best ways to learn a language is the reading time of the target language. With quite a number of grammatical analyses, good digital dictionaries which recognize even complex compounds, and handy reference grammars out there, this can be accomplished right from the get-go. I think this approach is also more fun and less of a headache than using most grammars that contain lessons. Below is a link to a short summary of that approach.

I also attached here a further grammatical analysis, in case of interest (A Grammatical Parsing of Basic Recitations.pdf). Alongside Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s grammar guide Reading the Buddha’s Discourses in Pali already mentioned, Anuruddha’s A Guide to study of Pali: the language of Theravada Buddhism is also very handy and a bit more detailed with the grammatical analyses, as far as I remember (https://www.amazon.com/Guide-study-Pali-language-Theravada/dp/9889929678).

Best Pali dictionary for Android or online

Hi, there! For the record if not directly relevant anymore: I think arguably the smoothest experience will give us the Digital Pāli Dictionary (DPD) of Ven. Bodhirasa (South Africa), which he still updates regularly. It includes various details not found in any other dictionary. It runs via Golden Dictionary and MDict. Detailed instructions on how to set everything up can be found via: Home - Digital Pāḷi Dictionary. If you want to receive updates, please PM your e-mail address, and I would for…

Wish you all the best with your Pāḷi studies!

[Sunyo]

I never did formal word memorization for Pali. Too boring! And not time-effective for me either. I just learned vocabulary through usage, which is what I was advised by my teacher. Now I’m able to read a lot of Pāli quite fluently.

Vocabulary is my weakest point still, but that is exactly what dictionaries are perfect for. But dictionaries can not tell us how the grammar of a sentence works, that’s all up to us. So that’s where you want to focus, in my opinion, if you want to be effective.

My advice is, once you have a good understanding of the grammar, start translating passages and short suttas that inspire you. Then reread, recite, and, as you learn, retranslate those passages to see if you got any of the grammar wrong earlier. This way you hit many birds with one stone: you learn grammar, you learn vocabulary, you get inspired, and you get a dose of dhamma every time. This will also make it more likely you’ll stick with it, because you see more beneficial results.

Because we don’t want to be time-effective in studying Pali, we want to be time effective in letting Pali guide our path. At least, that’s what I’m assuming your actual goal is.

The aspiration to sit down and read every sutta in Pali practically without a dictionary is honorable, but I can’t do it. A more reasonable expectation would be to be able to read most central doctrinal passages without a dictionary, and when you encounter rarer passages, not have to think about the grammar too much, since it has become automatic. Then your main problem is looking up unknown words, which, as I said, is just knowing how to use a dictionary.

[Dheerayupa]

Wow!

I don’t know how to say this without sounding condescending, but…

This is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard :-).

As a learner and teacher of English, I totally agree with Venerable @Sunyo. Lack of good knowledge of grammar hinders understanding. Dictionaries and the skill to guess the meaning of a word in a context can be employed to help us deal with lexical issues of a sentence within seconds, but we can’t say the same about a good grammar book and a grammar issue.

@vivittagiri

able to read fluently without having to look up too many words

When my friends and I were studying ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad, we compiled a glossary of lexical items that we didn’t know. For such a small book, there were over 1,000 words that we hadn’t seen before! After that, I learnt when to consult a dictionary and when to guess the meaning of a word.

But perhaps reading a sutta is different from reading secular literature?

[NgXinZhao]

@vivittagiri

“A New Course in Reading Pāli,”

I hope you have progressed well in these few months.

I am now doing many pāḷi-english books together.

Let me just list and comment on them a bit.

1. Pali primer, de silva - best for the extensive practise on super basics, really gets the basic vocab down due to the super a lot of exercises per amount of new things learnt.

2. Comprehensive pali course, buddharakkhita - exercises has dhamma content, but disadvantage is very user unfriendly, not recommended as first book. It doesn’t label the gender of the noun, one has to find it in dictionary to know how to decline them, the exercises can use words in future exercises, and I have to find a lot of dictionary to do them. And they are super long instead of bite sized so it’s hard to do one chapter per day, but I just finished book 1, should finish book 2 in 25 more days, but I will spread it with another book.

3. Introduction to Pali, warner - Looks nice, but the content jumps all over and it expects you to really remember all the words it scatters here and there. The texts makes it a bit harder to focus on the vocab list and new grammar, but if one has a basic from other books, this shouldn’t be a problem to go through. Also some exercises are dhammic in content, so good overall, especially first few chapters before the super long chapters. I am doing the slowest on this one.

4. New Pali course part 1, 2, 3, Buddhadatta - the main grammar book of the SBS pali course, but we use different vocab for our course. Overall ok. Quite systematic in introduction of grammar and reasonable amount of exercises, unlike pali primer which is too much. So spreading this and pali primer would be good.

5. A graduated Pali course, sumangala - one of the very nice graduated grammar introduction. Too bad I cannot find an answer sheet to compare my exercises to, but overall a nice presentation, and very short sentences but a lot of exercises, which is fast to finish.

6. An elementary Pali course, narada- one of the easiest, similar to pali primer, but exercises are not as gruelling. I would recommend this as a first book, alongside pali primer.

7. Pali Made Easy, Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maitreya- very different presentation of grammar compared to other books, the verbs are done first and then nouns declensions. Very good for getting into the thing without having to memorize so many things up front. A nice pairing as one of the first books.

I calculated that it would take a year and a bit to finish them all and two more books, the one you are doing and the B. Bodhi’s book, just one chapter per day. But I also try to do 10 pali primer questions per day, given that it’s 60 questions per chapter for a lot of their chapters. It’s not too hard when one just go from one book to another and sometimes learn new things when a book is further ahead compared to the rest and the rest of the time relax and enjoy familiar grammar with ever stronger vocab. I rarely had to use dictionary for pali primer’s book, but also thanks to it’s anki.

For anki, I recommend the sbs produced decks. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/600739051

Find the other items shared by the same user, especially sbs pali English vocab, vocab pali class and pātimokkha word by word. These should be enough to start off. And it might take 1 or 2 years to finish them at a leisurely rate. There’s example sentences, so I often just guess the meaning based on context. As my vocab grows, I can get more of the example sentences and guess better.

Sbs pali English vocab is meant to be done with chanting book memorizing, so those vocab would be totally in as a basis. SBS Pāḷi-English Vocab - Anki Deck | SBS DhammaVinaya Learning Tools

Those chantings are commonly used and would really benefit any monastics for travelling a lot of places, some suttas would come up in common.

Overall I am getting better at scanning for words, although I don’t do reading pali as an exercise, anki and the pali exercises are a lot already. I am doing a lot of decks together.

Don’t despair at the rate of progress. I started pali in 2012 doing diploma in buddhism, but totally didn’t learn much by the end in 2016, and started anki properly about 2 years ago, on and off, but now my pali improved a lot in just a few months.

The advantage of using so many books is that when one is bored with this book, one can switch, spice up the learning. And we get all the other books revising the same thing so it’s not that hard to learn them.

I don’t consider a new course in reading pali and b. bodhi’s book are for beginners, at least finish one of the grammar books first.

For anki, maybe expect a 5 year or so length for more and more vocab, so that it doesn’t take up too much time, 20-40 new cards per day is nice, or less if it takes up too much time. I searched pali in the anki web deck and got almost all of them and making some on my own. I spend way too much time in anki.

Also, to be able to estimate the rate of progress, see the total cards to be done divided by new cards per day. I have an excel to keep track of the pali books I am doing and calculated total chapters at 1 chapter per day. It’s a snail’s pace for that book because I don’t think it’s meant for total beginners, get some vocab and grammar from other books first where one can do 1 chapter per day, then motivation can go up.

[christie]

Hi @vivittagiri

I just noticed you posted this around 8 months ago. I am curious how you have progressed since then, which advice worked for you, and what your thoughts are now.

I am in the process of writing a Pali textbook, so I am interested in how others experience the learning process.

[thatnerdjosh]

I’m just now starting on my journey to learn more languages (including Pali) - was wondering, since you have used LWT, which at this point looks to not be maintained as far as I can tell — what’s you’re thoughts on this GitHub - LuteOrg/lute-v3: LUTE = Learning Using Texts: learn languages through reading. Python/Flask.

Thank you in advance!

[Pasanna]

I haven’t tried it.
LWT worked fine for me last time I had it running, plus it was easy to install.

Thanks for pointing to LUTE, can you recognise any advantages or different features over LWT?

I’d be keen to see if there was a way to get DPD to work with LWT or LUTE

[no149]

I am also interested in learning either Pali or Sanskrit in my mother language which is Persian. Alas there does not seem to be any resources for that besides one or two academic books.

[srkris]

@no149

mother language which is Persian

Have you seen this book? Pesian-sanskrit Grammar : D,r C Kunhan Raja : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[srkris]

Lute is actively being updated and improved every month, and I have submitted several suggestions to improve it, which the person who makes it has thankfully incorporated. Lute I think is a much better product than LWT, I have used LWT in the past before I found Lute.

My story of learning Pali is I didnt learn it formally. I learnt Sanskrit well and that gave me enough grounding to start reading Pali texts, then I understood the places where Pali differs from Sanskrit grammatically and phonetically, and I am able to read most Pali without dictionary help. Nearly all Pali vocabulary and grammar is the same as Sanskrit (but with mostly regular phonetic changes). So without learning Pali separately I am fluent in it.

[no149]

Thanks.

Do you think if I learn Sanskrit from English resources, some meaning would be lost because of my mother language?
I have this programming analogy in my mind, where, conversion from a high-level language to another high level language and converting it to a common low-level language is usually not an efficient process and there might be performance penalty.

[Dogen]

@no149

Do you think if I learn Sanskrit from English resources, some meaning would be lost because of my mother language?

@no149

I am also interested in learning either Pali or Sanskrit in my mother language which is Persian. Alas there does not seem to be any resources for that besides one or two academic books.

I can suggest you to try using ChatGPT for a seamless conversion. AI for suttas gets a bad rep around these parts; but LLMs are built specifically to understand language, so in that sense, I find that they’re amazing language teachers. Of course, they don’t have a pre-existing module specifically to teach, but they can help greatly with tables and all the gritty stuff. Asking for specific suttas off its database is often a cause of hallucination, sticking to discussing grammar and vocabulary I never seem to get weird hallucinations.

Perhaps pairing this with an english primer such as Bhikkhu Bodhi’s Pāli book or De Silva’s primer, etc; it should cover all your bases.

Personally, I’m in a bit of a similar boat, there are no Pāli resources in my language but I’m fluent in english enough to not have any problems whatsoever. But I’m working on translating suttas and terms to Turkish as well, so, looking up a word in Pāli, in English resources, translating to Turkish, etc, all are great repetitions so it helps me learn deeper.

I mean, since Pāli is a dead language, you probably just want to read it in order to understand the nuances better, so working on machine translations of suttas in persian, comparing it to english versions to double check, having AI break things down grammatically should be a good way to start. And who knows, maybe you’ll be the one who’ll write the first Pāli-Persian grammar / vocabulary books!

[Snowbird]

@Dogen

AI for suttas gets a bad rep around these parts;

They do indeed!

but LLMs are built specifically to understand language, so in that sense,

Sorry if I’m beating a dead horse, but LLMs absolutely do not understand language. They don’t understand anything.

I find that they’re amazing language teachers.

This is possibly one of the worst uses for LLMs, especially when dealing with two (apologies) very minor languages. And if someone is learning a language, they are by definition the worst people to judge if the LLM is barfing up correct information.

I don’t want to side track the conversation, so I’ll leave it at that.

[stephen]

How about joining an online class?

[srkris]

@no149

Do you think if I learn Sanskrit from English resources, some meaning would be lost because of my mother language?

No, learning Sanskrit or Pali in any non-Indian language would be more lossy in any case so it wouldnt be specially lossy for you more than for anybody else that speaks a non-Indian language.

Sanskrit is very close to Old-Persian and Avestan (so it would be like learning a very old version of Farsi, as Farsi is derived from Old-Persian via Middle-Persian). Perhaps you would spot common vocabulary between Sanskrit and Farsi, so it will be easier from a vocabulary point of view.

If you live in/near Tehran I can suggest the name of a Sanskrit professor whom you can meet/talk to and he will be able to give you practical advice or help.

But if you are thinking Sanskrit or Pali, I would suggest you go with Sanskrit as Pali can be understood much better for someone who has been through Sanskrit first (but the reverse is not necessarily true).

[Pasanna]

Instructions of using LUTE for Pali
EDITED AGAIN

DPD now have an online dictionary, https://www.dpdict.net and it works great with LUTE
the path you need to put in the dictionary is https://www.dpdict.net/gd?search=### you will need to use it for both words and sentence settings (even though it won’t work for sentences). I added a second dictionary from SuttaCentral
https://suttacentral.net/define/###?lang=en

For Sanskrit and Classical Chinese nerds, they come pre-installed in LUTE

Mac and unix user: this is the basics of the installation for LUTE:

Lute (Learning Using Texts) version 3

Windows user install instructions here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtClbRqBiEM