Pali study guide.

1. Start with the  Pali Primer  by Lily de Silva

This is a very accessible introduction to the language, and provides lots of exercise sentences for
translating Pali to English and also English to Pali. It goes at a nice slow pace and introduces gradually
the important concepts of noun declension and verb conjugation, unfamiliar to most English speakers.
It's main limitation is that it does not use examples from the suttas in its exercises and it's  presentation
of material in the later chapters lacks a little depth. It’s probably even best to stop using this book after
you’ve gone through about half of it and when you are sick of translating sentences in the exercises
like “The monkey climbs the tree and sees the lion”!! This book is easy to find, and even available to
use directly from the internet (http://www.vri.dhamma.org/publications/pali/primer/index.html).
Alternatively start with one of the other basic books like Narada's Elementary Pali, which is also freely
available on the web.

2. After getting some basics under your belt, I strongly recommend The New Course in
Reading Pali  by Gair and Karunatillake.

I have worked through it entirely and found that having completed the  Pali Primer   beforehand
helped a lot, but is not absolutely necessary. The authors are very thorough in their treatment of the
grammar and all the exercise material is directly taken from the suttas, which is a very good feature.
My own answers for the exercises have been posted to the Pali Yahoo list, and are maintained on the
tipitaka.net website (for info about both of these, see below). The drawback with this  book is that
there are only about 12 chapters and consequently each chapter contains an enormous amount of
material.

3. The standard textbook  Introduction to Pali  by A. K. Warder  covers all the basics in a very
thorough way, and I would consider it a must for all serious Pali students eventually  – but it is not   a
book for beginners. The exercise material is also right from the canon (specifically, the Digha Nikaya),
and very useful in that respect. But many people find it to be a difficult book, and not for the faint of
heart! Warder presents so much detail on each topic that this tends to be overwhelming and off-putting
for someone just starting out. However, after tackling some other elementary texts first, then it
becomes relatively easy to handle. My solutions to the exercises for the first 21 chapters are posted on
access to insight at http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/kelly/answers/index.html and are also on the
tipitaka.net website.

4. An excellent grammar reference book to have on hand is  A Pali Grammar for Students
  by Steven Collins. The Pali English Dictionary (PED) published by the Pali Text Society
is also a great book to eventually have as a resource material as you continue your Pali studies. This is
available online at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/.

5. Further useful guidance on learning Pali can be found at

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bullitt/learningpali.html and at
http://www.tipitaka.net/pali/#Pali%20Section.