[INDOLOGY] Pali: list of most frequent words?

[Gleb Sharygin]

Dear Antonia,

I was unfortunate enough to buy the so-called "frequency dictionary" by K.
Schmidt a few years ago.
Having checked it, I was astounded by the number of mistakes. I actually
wanted to write an (outraged)
 book review, and here is a good place to warn everyone that the amount and
character of mistakes
definitely render the book unsuitable for learning purposes, or, put
simply, any learner should avoid it.
However, those who have already learnt the language and read the core
texts, would find the arrangement
of lexical items from the most frequent ones to the least frequent ones at
least probable (only regarding the
Sutta-piṭaka texts).

I also couldn't find the original publication and I wonder if the
publishers of the book perhaps
got their hands on an unpublished draft/manuscript or simply put the name
of the author on someone's/
their own creation for respectability.

In principle, some of the most frequent Pāli words are those which comprise
the most popular formulas, *verbatim *
repeated portions of texts. The full statistical analysis, AFAIK, has not
been done, but some of the materials
published by the Pāli Text Society provide valuable information in this
regard.

Another important question is what we understand by "Pāli". The four old
Nikāyas, the whole Sutta-piṭaka, the whole Tipiṭaka,
the commentaries, the subcommentaries, the learned treatises like the
Visuddhimagga or the modern Pāli works?
Different people are interested in different "layers" of the Pāli
literature, and for someone who is interested in later
(for instance, medieval) Pāli sources a list of the most frequent words of
the four old Nikāyas would be of little use.

Kind regards,
Gleb Sharygin

пт, 3 июн. 2022 г. в 20:59, Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info>:

> Dear all,
>
> Is there/does anyone have a list of the 500 or 1000 most frequently used
> Pali words? The only list of this kind I could find online was what looked
> like the English translation of an annotated glossary by Kurt Schmidt ('A
> Frequency Dictionary of Pali'); but the English version seems to have many
> mistakes, and I cannot find mention of what I assume is the German original
> anywhere.
>
> Many thanks, as always,
>       Antonia
>
>
> --
> Dr Antonia Ruppel FRAS
> Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie,
> LMU München
> Researcher on the 'Uncovering Sanskrit Syntax' Project, University of
> Oxford
> The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit: cambridge-sanskrit.org
> An Introductory Sanskrit Reader: brill.com/sanskrit
> The Sanskrit Studies Podcast: sanskritstudiespodcast.com
>
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