Standard Tibetan

Like many languages, Standard Tibetan has a variety of language registers:

• Phal-skad ("demotic language"): the vernacular speech.
• Zhe-sa ("polite respectful speech"): the formal spoken style, particularly prominent in Lhasa.
• Chos-skad ("religious {or book} language"): the literary style in which the scriptures and other classical works are written.[3]

Stone tablets with prayers in Tibetan at a Temple in McLeod Ganj

Pejas, scriptures of Tibetan Buddhism, at a library in Dharamsala, India

Unlike many other languages of East Asia and especially Chinese, another Sino-Tibetan language, there are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting in Tibetan although words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.[3]

In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Vedic Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.[3]

Tibetan is written with an Indic script, with a historically conservative orthography that reflects Old Tibetan phonology and helps unify the Tibetan-language area. It is also helpful in reconstructing Proto Sino-Tibetan and Old Chinese.

Wylie transliteration is the most common system of romanization used by Western scholars in rendering written Tibetan using the Latin alphabet (such as employed on much of this page). Tibetan pinyin, however, is the official romanization system employed by the government of the People's Republic of China. Certain names may also retain irregular transcriptions, such as Chomolungma for Mount Everest.

The following summarizes the sound system of the dialect of Tibetan spoken in Lhasa, the most influential variety of the spoken language.

The standard Tibetan verbal system distinguishes four tenses and three evidential moods.[4]

The three moods may all occur with all three grammatical persons, though early descriptions associated the personal modal category with European first-person agreement.[5]

Standard Tibetan has a base-10 counting system.[6] The basic units of the counting system of Standard Tibetan is given in the table below in both the Tibetan script and a Romanisation for those unfamiliar with Written Tibetan.

In the 18th and 19th centuries several Western linguists arrived in Tibet:

• The Capuchin friars who settled in Lhasa for a quarter of century from 1719:[3]
  • Francesco della Penna, well known from his accurate description of Tibet,[3]
  • Cassian di Macerata sent home materials which were used by the Augustine friar Aug. Antonio Georgi of Rimini (1711–1797) in his Alphabetum Tibetanum (Rome, 1762, 4t0), a ponderous and confused compilation, which may be still referred to, but with great caution.[3]
• The Hungarian Sándor 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.
• Heinrich August Jäschke of the Moravian mission which was established in Ladakh in 1857,[3] Tibetan Grammar and A Tibetan–English Dictionary.
• At St Petersburg, Isaac Jacob Schmidt published his Grammatik der tibetischen Sprache in 1839 and his Tibetisch-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. His Tibetische Studien (1851–1868) is a valuable collection of documents and observations.[3]
• In France, P. E. Foucaux published in 1847 a translation from the Rgya tcher rol-pa, the Tibetan version of the Lalita Vistara, and in 1858 a Grammaire thibétaine.[3]
• Ant. Schiefner of St Petersburg in 1849 his series of translations and researches.[3]
• 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.

Indian indologist and linguist Rahul Sankrityayan wrote a Tibetan grammar in Hindi. Some of his other works on Tibetan were:

1. Tibbati Bal-Siksha, 1933
2. Pathavali (Vols. 1, 2, 3), 1933
3. Tibbati Vyakaran, 1933
4. Tibbat May Budh Dharm, 1948

• Japanese linguist Kitamura Hajime published a grammar and dictionary of Lhasa Tibetan

In much of Tibet, primary education is conducted either primarily or entirely in the Tibetan language, and bilingual education is rarely introduced before students reach middle school. However, Chinese is the language of instruction of most Tibetan secondary schools. In April 2020, classroom instruction was switched from Tibetan to Mandarin Chinese in Ngaba, Sichuan.[7] Students who continue on to tertiary education have the option of studying humanistic disciplines in Tibetan at a number of minority colleges in China.[8] That contrasts with Tibetan schools in Dharamsala, India, where the Ministry of Human Resource Development curriculum requires academic subjects to be taught in English from middle school.[9] Literacy and enrollment rates continue to be the main concern of the Chinese government. Much of the adult population in Tibet remains illiterate, and despite compulsory education policies, many parents in rural areas are unable to send their children to school.

In February 2008, Norman Baker, a UK MP, released a statement to mark International 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".[10] However, Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has noted that "within certain limits the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression" and "the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored."[11]

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 the Texas 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% of TAR 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."[12]

Recently, the Yushul Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Intermediate People's Court sentenced Tashi Wangchuk to five years in prison on 22 May 2018. Part of the evidence used in court was a New York Times video entitled, "Tashi Wangchuk: A Tibetan’s Journey for Justice" by Jonah M. Kessel. The accompanying text states, "To his surprise, he could not find one, even though nearly everyone living in this market town on the Tibetan plateau here is Tibetan. Officials had also ordered other monasteries and a private school in the area not to teach the language to laypeople. And public schools had dropped true bilingual education in Chinese and Tibetan, teaching Tibetan only in a single class, like a foreign language, if they taught it at all. 'This directly harms the culture of Tibetans,' said Mr. Tashi, 30, a shopkeeper who is trying to file a lawsuit to compel the authorities to provide more Tibetan education. 'Our people’s culture is fading and being wiped out.'"[13]

The most important Tibetan branch of language under threat is, however, the Ladakhi language of the Western Tibetan group, in the Ladakh region of India. In Leh, a slow but gradual process is underway whereby the Tibetan vernacular is being supplanted by English and Hindi, and there are signs of a gradual loss of Tibetan cultural identity in the area. The adjacent Balti language is also in severe danger, and unlike Ladakhi, it has already been replaced by Urdu as the main language of Baltistan, particularly due to settlers speaking Urdu from other areas moving to that area.

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.[14][15]
• 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.[16]
• THL Tibetan to English Translation Tool - A webpage that annotates Tibetan text various English meanings and translations, with 10+ dictionaries integrated.[17] A downloadable version is also available.[18]
• 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.[19]
• Panlex - A multilingual translation website with a few Tibetan words.[20]

• Amdo Tibetan language
• Khams Tibetan language
• Languages of Bhutan

• Bernard, Theos C. (1946), A Simplified Grammar of the Literary Tibetan Language, Santa Barbara, California: Tibetan Text Society.
• Das, Sarat Chandra (1902), Tibetan–English Dictionary (with Sanskrit Synonyms), Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot.. Reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass, Dehli, ISBN 81-208-1713-3.
• Hodge, Stephen (2003), An Introduction to Classical Tibetan, Orchid Press, ISBN 974-524-039-7.
• Jäschke, Heinrich August (2004), A short practical grammar of the Tibetan language, with special reference to the spoken dialects, London: Hardinge Simpole, ISBN 1-84382-077-3. " ... 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./ First edition published in Kye-Lang in Brit. Lahoul by the author, in manuscript, in 1865.
• —— (1866). Romanized Tibetan and English dictionary. Retrieved 2011-06-30.(Original from Oxford University)
• —— (1881). A Tibetan–English dictionary, with special reference to the prevailing dialects: To which is added an English-Tibetan vocabulary. London: Unger Brothers (T. Grimm).
• —— (1883). Heinrich Wenzel (ed.). Tibetan grammar. Trübner's collection of simplified grammars. 7 (2nd ed.). London: Trübner & co.
• Kopp, Teresa Kunkel. 1998. Verbalizers in Lhasa Tibetan. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Arlington.
• Naga, Sangye Tandar. (2010). "Some Reflections on the Mysterious Nature of Tibetan Language" In: The Tibet Journal, Special issue. Autumn 2009 vol XXXIV n. 3-Summer 2010 vol XXXV n. 2. "The Earth Ox Papers", edited by Roberto Vitali, pp. 561–566.
• Sandberg, Graham (1894). Hand-book of colloquial Tibetan: A practical guide to the language of Central Tibet. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.(Original from Harvard University)
• Tournadre, Nicolas; Dorje, Sangda (2003), Manual of Standard Tibetan, New York: Snow Lion Publications, ISBN 1-55939-189-8.
• Hahn, Michael. “Foundational Questions of Tibetan Morphology.” The Tibet Journal, vol. 33, no. 2, 1 July 2008, pp. 3–19.

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Research on Tibetan Languages: A Bibliography

Tibetan edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Online Keyboard for Tibetan