[StethyEntinic]

How close is the pali language to the language of shakyamuni.

[inilbowly]

I think I'm right in saying that nobody knows what language he spoke, so it's not a question which can really be answered but since there was an interlude of some 500 years between the Buddha's life and the first written version of the canon, even if he had spoken Pali, the Pali which got written down would probably be significantly different from that which he had spoken - but hopefully there's a linguist on board who can do a bit better!

[fiettariaps]

This is from Wikipedia, I don't know how accurate it is.



Many Theravada sources refer to the Pali language as "Magadhan" or the "language of Magadha". This identification first appears in the commentaries, and may have been an attempt by Buddhists to associate themselves more closely with the Mauryans. The Buddha taught in Magadha, but the four most important places in his life are all outside of it. It is likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had a very high degree of mutual intelligibility.

There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali. Pali has some commonalities with both the Ashokan inscriptions at Girnar in the West of India, and at Hathigumpha, Bhubaneswar, Orissa in the East. Similarities to the Western inscription may be misleading, because the inscription suggests that the Ashokan scribe may not have translated the material he received from Magadha into the vernacular of the people there.

Whatever the relationship of the Buddha's speech to Pali, the Canon was eventually transcribed and preserved entirely in it, while the commentarial tradition that accompanied it (according to the information provided by Buddhaghosa) was translated into Sinhalese and preserved in local languages for several generations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pali#In_Theravada_Buddhism



In "What the Buddha Thought", Professor Richard Gombrich (Pali & Buddhist studies scholar) states that Pali is closely related to the language that the Buddha himself must have spoken.



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[Soadiassy]

Keep in mind that most religious texts aren't written down in the language their founder spoke in. Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the Bible was written in Greek. Pali is probably closer to the language Buddha spoke than Greek is to Aramaic. In fact the only religious text I can think of that was written down in the founder's language is the Quran in Arabic.