Pali Declension Example

For my Dhamma School students, I have just written a single sentence with all eight noun declensions, using only words that they are supposed to learn (the first noun list from "The New Pali Course") plus one verb:

Mitta Buddhassa vānaro pāsāṇamhi ajāya hatthebhi rukkhasmā āhāraṃ deti.

Friend (vocative) / Buddha (possesive) / monkey (nominative) / rock (locative) / goat (dative) / hands (instrumental) / tree (ablative) / food (accusative) / gives.

Translation: Friend, the Buddha's monkey gives with his hands food from the tree to the goat on the rock.

I plan to introduce it by starting with just "vanāro deti" (the monkey gives) to demonstrate nominative, and then adding one word for each case until we've built the whole sentence.

I'm not 100% certain that it constitutes a properly idiomatic Pali sentence, especially where word order is concerned. But I doubt any of the students will complain about that, and it should be fun!

I will also pull it apart into simple phrases exemplifying each case one at a time, but I couldn't resist the idea to put them all in one sentence.

stem: vānara (monkey);
nominative: vānaro deti (the monkey gives)

stem: āhāra (food);
accusative: vānaro āhāraṃ deti (the monkey gives food)
     
stem: aja (goat);
dative: vānaro ajāya āhāraṃ deti (the monkey gives food to the goat)

stem: rukkha (tree)
ablative: rukkhasma āhāro (the food from the tree)

stem: hattha (hand)
instrumental: vānaro hatthebhi āhāraṃ deti (the monkey gives food with his hands)

stem: pāsāṇa (rock)
locative: pāsāṇamhi ajo (the goat on the rock)

stem: Buddha
genitive: Buddhassa vānaro (the Buddha's monkey)

stem: mitta (friend)
vocative: mitta, vānaro deti (friend, the monkey gives)