| Group |
Indic (with Hindi,
Marathi etc.), Middle Indic (with Prakrits) |
| Geography & History |
The Buddhist Canon in Sri Lanka is written in Pali, so the language
is still used as a sacred one in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia
and Vietnam. But its homeland is India, and Pali originally was one of
western dialects which later acquired certain eastern characteristics.
Later together with Buddhism it spread within the South Eastern Asia, and
a lot of scientific, religious and literature works were written in it
already when it was forgotten in India. There are in fact four kinds of
Pali: the Canon Pali, the literature Pali, the commentary Pali and the
modern Pali; the last one has got a significant number of local borrowings
and peculiarities and is no longer classical. |
| Phonetics |
Pali phonetics is rather simple: 5 simple vowels, no diphthongs and
sonant vowels, aspirated and non-aspirated consonants. Pali phonetic laws
prohibit the usage of a great number of fricative consonants together,
all words end in a vowel. |
| Nominal Morphology |
In morphology the number of vowel interchanges decreased in comparison
with Sanskrit; there is a trend of unification
of types of noun declension and verb conjugation, and the number of cases
is six at maximum. |
| Verbal Morphology |
The verb has only three tenses and two aspects: ancient Indic languages
Vedic and Sanskrit used much more of them. The
system of syntax is well developed and uses many auxiliary parts of speech
in analytical constructions. |
| Lexicon |
Pali is interesting for its vocabulary which is totally unnatural and
is created only in order to reflect the ideas of the religion. |
| Writing |
Brahmi script |
| Close Contacts |
Languages of the Southeast Asia contributed much to the "modern" variety
of Pali. Of the Indic languages, Pali is rather similar to Sanskrit. |
| Sample |
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| Picture |
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| More info |
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