Introduction to Pali Sentences
Personal Pronouns

In this Unit, we will construct basic Pali sentences with just two words – a subject and a verb. We will also understand a few concepts about verbs and nouns / pronouns.

For any meaningful sentence, we need :

  1. a verb - which indicates an action,
  2. a subject – which is the person / thing performing that action.

Consider these simple English sentences :

  1. I walk.
  2. She sits.
  3. You(s) sleep.
  4. They eat.
  5. He speaks.
  6. It falls.
  7. We go.

In all the above sentences, there is a subject performing an action. We also know that the subject and the verb need to be in agreement. i.e. with ‘I’ as the subject, the verb becomes ‘walk’ (‘walks’ would be incorrect). While with ‘she’ as the subject, the correct form of verb is ‘sits’. The singular subject pairs with singular form of verb and subject in plural will have a plural form of verb.

We have similar subject-verb agreement in Pali. To understand this concept and to construct a few Pali sentences, let us learn some pronouns and verbs.

Personal Pronouns

Singular Plural
Third Person he / she / it
so / / taṃ
they
te (m) / tā, tāyo (f) / te, tāni (n)
Second Person you
tvaṃ
you
tumhe
First Person I
ahaṃ
we
mayaṃ
Audio for personal pronouns
Last modified: Saturday, 31 December 2022, 11:06 AM