I am sometimes asked for resources or tools for studying Pali, the language of the Theravadin canon, encapsulating more or less the very language of the historical Buddha. My own instruction in Pali has been on my own with a good friend using Gair and Karunatillake (see below).

I then went on to study with Prof. Richard Gombrich in Oxford in 2011; which I thought I wrote about at some point, but I see only a couple other posts on the topic, one about the early launch of his online Pali classes, and one on his lecture on Religious Experience in Early Buddhism (both of which I strongly recommend).