In the traditional "three-branched" classification of theTibetic languages, the Lhasa dialect belongs to theCentral Tibetan branch (the other two beingKhams Tibetan andAmdo Tibetan).[4] In terms ofmutual intelligibility, speakers of Khams Tibetan are able to communicate at a basic level with Lhasa Tibetan, while Amdo speakers cannot.[4] Both Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan evolved to becometonal and do not preserve the word-initialconsonant clusters, which makes them very far fromClassical Tibetan, especially when compared to the moreconservative Amdo Tibetan.[5][6]
ཕལ་སྐད (Wylie:phal skad, literally "demotic language"): the vernacular speech.
ཞེ་ས (Wylie:zhe sa, "honorifics or deference, courtesy"): the formal spoken style, particularly prominent inLhasa.
ཡིག་སྐད (Wylie:yig skad, literally "letters language" or "literary language"): the written literary style; may includeཆོས་སྐདchos skad below.[7]
ཆོས་སྐད (Wylie:chos skad, literally "doctrine language" or "religious language"): the literary style in which the scriptures and other classical works are written.[8]
Tibetan nouns do not possessgrammatical gender, although this may be marked lexically, nor do they inflect fornumber. However, definite human nouns may take a plural markerཚོ<tsho>.
Tibetan has been described as having six cases:absolutive,agentive,genitive,ablative,associative andoblique. These are generally marked by particles, which are attached to entire noun phrases, rather than individual nouns. These suffixes may vary in form based on the final sound of the root.
Personal pronouns are inflected fornumber, showing singular, dual and plural forms. They can have between one and threeregisters.
The Standard Tibetan language distinguishes three levels ofdemonstrative: proximalའདི<'di> "this", medialདེ<de> "that", and distalཕ་གི<pha-gi> "that over there (yonder)". These can also take case suffixes.
Verbs in Tibetan always come at the end of theclause. Verbs do not show agreement inperson,number orgender in Tibetan. There is also novoice distinction between active andpassive; Tibetan verbs are neutral with regard to voice.[9]
Tibetan verbs can be divided into classes based onvolition andvalency. The volition of the verb has a major effect on itsmorphology andsyntax. Volitional verbs haveimperative forms, whilst non-volitional verbs do not: compareལྟོས་ཤིག<ltos shig> "Look!" with the non-existent *མཐོང་ཤིག<mthong shig> "*See!". Additionally, only volitional verbs can take the egophoric copulaཡིན<yin>.[10]
Verbs in Tibetan can be split into monovalent and divalent verbs; some may also act as both, such asཆག<chag> "break". This interacts with the volition of the verb to condition which nouns take theergative case and which must take theabsolutive, remaining unmarked.[10] Nonetheless, distinction intransitivity is orthogonal to volition; both the volitional and non-volitional classes contain transitive as well as intransitive verbs.
Theaspect of the verb affects which verbal suffixes and which final auxiliary copulae are attached. Morphologically, verbs in the unaccomplished aspect are marked by the suffixགི<gi> or its other forms, identical to thegenitive case for nouns, whereas accomplished aspect verbs do not use this suffix. Each can be broken down into two subcategories: under the unaccomplished aspect,future andprogressive/general; under the accomplished aspect,perfect andaorist or simple perfective.[10]
Evidentiality is a well-known feature of Tibetan verb morphology, gaining much scholarly attention,[11] and contributing substantially to the understanding of evidentiality across languages.[12] The evidentials in Standard Tibetan interact with aspect in a system marked by final copulae, with the following resultant modalities being a feature of Standard Tibetan, as classified byNicolas Tournadre:[13]
Unlike many other languages ofEast Asia such asBurmese,Chinese,Japanese,Korean andVietnamese, there are no numeral auxiliaries ormeasure words used in counting in Tibetan. However, words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.[14]
In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in VedicSanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.[14]
The written numerals are a variant of theHindu–Arabic numeral system, forming a base-10 positional counting system[15] that is attested early on in Classical Tibetan texts.
Tibetan makes use of a special connector particle for the units above each multiple of ten. Between 100 and 199, the connectiveདངdang, literally "and", is used after the hundred portion.[15] Aboveས་ཡsaya million, the numbers are treated as nouns and thus have their multiples following the word.[15]
The numbers 1, 2, 3 and 10 change spelling when combined with other numerals, reflecting a change in pronunciation in combination.[15]
Ordinal numbers are formed by adding a suffix to the cardinal number,པ (-pa), with the exception of the ordinal number "first", which has its own lexeme,དང་པོ (dang po).[15]
Tibetan is written with anIndic script, with a historically conservative orthography that reflectsOld Tibetan phonology and helps unify the Tibetan-language area. It is also helpful in reconstructingProto Sino-Tibetan andOld Chinese.[17]
Wylie transliteration is the most common system ofromanization used by Western scholars in rendering written Tibetan using theLatin alphabet (such as employed on much of this page), while linguists tend to use other special transliteration systems of their own. As for transcriptions meant to approximate the pronunciation,Tibetan pinyin is the official romanization system employed by the government of thePeople's Republic of China, while English language materials use the THL transcription[18] system. Certain names may also retain irregular transcriptions, such asChomolungma forMount Everest.
Tibetan orthographic syllable structure is (C1C2)C3(C4)V(C5C6)[19] Not all combinations are licit.
Also,tones arecontrastive in this language, where at least two tonemes are distinguished.[26] Although the four-tone analysis is favored by linguists in China,[27]DeLancey (2003) suggests that the falling tone and the final[k] or[ʔ] are incontrastive distribution, describing Lhasa Tibetan syllables as either high or low.[23]
In the low tone, the unaspirated/p,t,ts,ʈ~ʈʂ,tɕ,c,k/ are voiced[b,d,dz,ɖ~ɖʐ,dʑ,ɟ,ɡ], whereas the aspirated stops and affricates/pʰ,tʰ,tsʰ,ʈʰ~ʈʂʰ,tɕ,cʰ,kʰ/ lose some of their aspiration. Thus, in this context, the main distinction between/p,t,ts,ʈ~ʈʂ,tɕ,c,k/ and/pʰ,tʰ,tsʰ,ʈʰ~ʈʂʰ,tɕʰ,cʰ,kʰ/ is voicing. The dialect of the upper social strata in Lhasa does not use voiced stops and affricates in the low tone.
The consonants/m/,/ŋ/,/p/,/r/,/l/, and/k/ may appear in syllable-final positions. The Classical Tibetan final/n/ is still present, but its modern pronunciation is normally realized as a nasalisation of the preceding vowel, rather than as a discrete consonant (see above). However,/k/ is not pronounced in the final position of a word except in very formal speech. Also, syllable-final/r/ and/l/ are often not clearly pronounced but realized as a lengthening of the preceding vowel. The phonemicglottal stop/ʔ/ appears only at the end of words in the place of/s/,/t/, or/k/, which were pronounced in Classical Tibetan but have since been elided. For instance, the word forTibet itself wasBod in Classical Tibetan but is now pronounced[pʰø̀ʔ] in the Lhasa dialect.
Three additional vowels are sometimes described as significantly distinct:[ʌ] or[ə], which is normally an allophone of/a/;[ɔ], which is normally an allophone of/o/; and[ɛ̈] (an unrounded, centralised, mid front vowel), which is normally an allophone of/e/. These sounds normally occur in closed syllables; because Tibetan does not allowgeminated consonants, there are cases in which one syllable ends with the same sound as the one following it. The result is that the first is pronounced as an open syllable but retains the vowel typical of a closed syllable. For instance,ཞབསzhabs (foot) is pronounced[ɕʌp] andཔདpad (borrowing from Sanskritpadma,lotus) is pronounced[pɛʔ], but the compound word,ཞབས་པདzhabs pad (lotus-foot, government minister) is pronounced[ɕʌpɛʔ]. This process can result inminimal pairs involving sounds that are otherwise allophones.
Sources vary on whether the[ɛ̈] phone (resulting from/e/ in a closed syllable) and the[ɛ] phone (resulting from/a/ through thei-mutation) are distinct or basically identical.
Phonemic vowel length exists in Lhasa Tibetan but in a restricted set of circumstances. Assimilation of Classical Tibetan's suffixes, normally 'i (འི་), at the end of a word produces a long vowel in Lhasa Tibetan; the feature is sometimes omitted in phonetic transcriptions. In normal spoken pronunciation, a lengthening of the vowel is also frequently substituted for the sounds[r] and[l] when they occur at the end of a syllable.
The vowels/i/,/y/,/e/,/ø/, and/ɛ/ each have nasalized forms:/ĩ/,/ỹ/,/ẽ/,/ø̃/, and/ɛ̃/, respectively.[30] These historically result from/in/,/un/,/en/,/on/,/an/, and are reflected in the written language. The vowel quality of/un/,/on/ and/an/ has shifted, since historical/n/, along with all other coronal final consonants, caused a form ofumlaut in the Ü/Dbus branch ofCentral Tibetan.[31] In some unusual cases, the vowels/a/,/u/, and/o/ may also be nasalised.
The Lhasa dialect is usually described as having two tones: high and low. However, in monosyllabic words, each tone can occur with two distinct contours. The high tone can be pronounced with either a flat or a falling contour, and the low tone can be pronounced with either a flat or rising-falling contour, the latter being a tone that rises to a medium level before falling again. It is normally safe to distinguish only between the two tones because there are very fewminimal pairs that differ only because of contour. The difference occurs only in certain words ending in the sounds [m] or [ŋ]; for instance, the wordkham (Tibetan:ཁམ་, "piece") is pronounced[kʰám] with a high flat tone, whereas the wordKhams (Tibetan:ཁམས་, "theKham region") is pronounced[kʰâm] with a high falling tone.[32]
In polysyllabic words, tone is not important except in the first syllable. This means that from the point of view of phonologicaltypology, Tibetan could more accurately be described as apitch-accent language than a truetone language, in the latter of which all syllables in a word can carry their own tone.
The Lhasa Tibetan verbal system distinguishes four tenses and three evidential moods.[33]
Future
Present
Past
Perfect
Personal
V་གི་ཡིན་ V-gi-yin
V་གི་ཡོད་ V-gi-yod
V་པ་ཡིན / V་བྱུང་ V-pa-yin /byung
V་ཡོད་ V-yod
Factual
V་གི་རེད་ V-gi-red
V་གི་ཡོད་པ་རེད་ V-gi-yod-pa-red
V་པ་རེད་ V-pa-red
V་ཡོད་པ་རེད་ V-yod-pa-red
Testimonial
-------
V་གི་འདུག་ V-gi-'dug
V་སོང་ V-song
V་བཞག་ V-bzhag
The threemoods may all occur with all three grammatical persons, though early descriptions associated the personal modal category with European first-person agreement.[34]
Cassian diMacerata sent home materials which were used by the Augustine friar Aug. Antonio Georgi of Rimini (1711–1797) in hisAlphabetum Tibetanum (Rome, 1762, 4t0), a ponderous and confused compilation, which may be still referred to, but with great caution.[35]
The HungarianSándor Kőrösi Csoma (1784–1842), who published the first Tibetan–European language dictionary (Classical Tibetan and English in this case) and grammar,Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English.
At St Petersburg,Isaac Jacob Schmidt published hisGrammatik der tibetischen Sprache in 1839 and hisTibetisch-deutsches Wörterbuch in 1841. His access to Mongolian sources had enabled him to enrich the results of his labours with a certain amount of information unknown to his predecessors. HisTibetische Studien (1851–1868) is a valuable collection of documents and observations.[36]
In France, P. E. Foucaux published in 1847 a translation from theRgya tcher rol-pa, the Tibetan version of theLalita Vistara, and in 1858 aGrammaire thibétaine.[36]
Ant. Schiefner of St Petersburg in 1849 his series of translations and researches.[36]
Theos Casimir Bernard, a PhD scholar of religion from Columbia University, explorer and practitioner of Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism, published, after his 1936/37 trip to India and Tibet,A Simplified Grammar of the Literary Tibetan Language, 1946. See the 'Books' section.
In much of Tibet,primary education is conducted either primarily or entirely in the Tibetan language, and bilingual education is rarely introduced before students reachmiddle school. However, Chinese is the language of instruction of most Tibetansecondary schools. In April 2020, classroom instruction was switched from Tibetan to Mandarin Chinese inNgaba, Sichuan.[37] Students who continue on totertiary education have the option of studyinghumanistic disciplines in Tibetan at a number of minority colleges in China.[38] This contrasts with Tibetan schools inDharamsala, India, where the Ministry of Human Resource Development curriculum requires academic subjects to be taught in English from middle school.[39]
In February 2008,Norman Baker, a British Member of Parliament, released a statement to markInternational Mother Language Day claiming, "The Chinese government are following a deliberate policy of extinguishing all that is Tibetan, including their own language in their own country" and he asserted a right for Tibetans to express themselves "in their mother tongue".[40] However,Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has noted that "within certain limits thePRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression" and "the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored."[41]
Some scholars also question such claims because most Tibetans continue to reside in rural areas where Chinese is rarely spoken, as opposed to Lhasa and other Tibetan cities where Chinese can often be heard. In theTexas Journal of International Law,Barry Sautman stated that "none of the many recent studies of endangered languages deems Tibetan to be imperiled, and language maintenance among Tibetans contrasts with language loss even in the remote areas of Western states renowned for liberal policies... claims that primary schools in Tibet teach Mandarin are in error. Tibetan was the main language of instruction in 98% ofTAR primary schools in 1996; today, Mandarin is introduced in early grades only in urban schools.... Because less than four out of ten TAR Tibetans reach secondary school, primary school matters most for their cultural formation."[42]
An incomplete list of machine translation software or applications that can translate Tibetan language from/to a variety of other languages.
藏译通 – Zangyitong, a mobile app for translating between Tibetan and Chinese.[43]
青海弥陀翻译 – A Beta-version WeChat Mini Program that translate between Tibetan language to/from Chinese. (invitation from WeChat users only)
腾讯民汉翻译 – A WeChat Mini Program that translate between Tibetan language to/from Chinese.[44]
THL Tibetan to English Translation Tool – A webpage that annotates Tibetan text various English meanings and translations, with 10+ dictionaries integrated.[45] A downloadable version is also available.[46]
中国社科院 藏汉(口语)机器翻译 – A demonstrative website (slow in response) translating Tibetan to Chinese, developed by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It works well on Tibetan text from official Chinese News websites.[47]
Panlex – A multilingual translation website with a few Tibetan words.[48]
'gro ba mi'i rigs rgyud yongs la skyes tsam nyid nas che mthongs dang thob thangagi rang dbang 'dra mnyam du yod la khong tshor rang byung gi blo rtsal dang bsam tshul bzang po 'don pa'i 'os babs kyang yod de bzhin phan tshun gcig gis gcig la bu spun gyi 'du shes 'dzin pa'i bya spyod kyang lag len bstar dgos pa yin
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
^The name "Lhasa Tibetan" is the preferred name, as in Chapter 19: Lhasa Tibetan,The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd edition (2017), edited byGraham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla.
^Tibetan:བོད་ཡིག་བརྡ་ཚད་ལྡན་དུ་སྒྱུར་བའི་ལས་དོན་ཨུ་ཡོན་ལྷན་ཁང་གིས་བསྒྲིགས་,Wylie:bod yig brda tshad ldan du sgyur ba'i las don u yon lhan khang gis bsgrigs;Chinese:藏语术语标准化工作委员会
^DeLancey, Scott (2017). "Chapter 19: Lhasa Tibetan". InGraham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla (ed.).The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd edition. Taylor & Francis.ISBN978-0-367-57045-3.
^abGelek, Konchok (2017). "Variation, contact, and change in language: Varieties in Yul shul (northern Khams)".International Journal of the Sociology of Language (245): 91-92.
^Maslak, Mary Ann (February 2008). "School as a site of Tibetan ethnic identity construction in India? Results from a content analysis of textbooks and Delphi study of teachers' perspectives".China: An International Journal.60 (1):85–106.doi:10.1080/00131910701794671.
^Sperling, Elliot (2000). "Exile and Dissent: The Historical and Cultural Context". In Harris, Melissa; Jones, Sydney (eds.).Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison, or Exile. pp. 31–36.
^Sautman, Barry (2003). "Cultural Genocide and Tibet".Texas Journal of International Law.38 (2):173–246.
Hahn, Michael (July 2008). "Foundational Questions of Tibetan Morphology".The Tibet Journal.33 (2):3–19.
Hodge, Stephen (2003).An Introduction to Classical Tibetan. Orchid Press.ISBN974-524-039-7.
Jäschke, Heinrich August (2004) [1865, Kye-Lang, Brit. Lahoul, H. A. Jäschke].A short practical grammar of the Tibetan language, with special reference to the spoken dialects. London: Hardinge Simpole.ISBN1-84382-077-3. " ... contains a facsimile of the original publication in manuscript, the first printed version of 1883, and the later Addenda published with the Third Edition."—P. [4] of cover.
Naga, Sangye Tandar (2010). Vitali, Roberto (ed.). "Some Reflections on the Mysterious Nature of Tibetan Language".The Tibet Journal.34–35 (3-2: The Earth Ox Papers):561–566.JSTOR43302083.
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