Tibetan

Origin

During the 7th Century AD Songstem Gampo [སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ་] (569-649AD), the 33rd king of the Yarlung Dynasty of southern Tibet and the first Emperor of Tibet, sent Thonmi Sambhota, one of his ministers, to India to gather information on Buddhism. The minister then reputedly devised a script for Tibetan based on the Devanagari model and also wrote a grammar of Tibetan based on Sanskrit grammars.

The new Tibetan alphabet was used to write Tibetan translations of Buddhists texts. The first Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary, Mahavyutpatti, appeared in the 9th century. Wood block printing, introduced from China, was used in Tibet from an early date and is still used in a few monasteries.

Tibetan literature is mainly concerned with Buddhist themes and includes works translated from Sanskrit and Chinese and original Tibetan works. There are also literary works about the Bon religion, a pre-Buddhist religion indigenous to Tibet. The most unusual genre of Tibetan literature is that of gter-ma (གཏེར་མ་) or 'rediscovered' texts - reputedly the work of ancient masters which have been hidden in remote caves for many centuries.

Notable features

The Tibetan alphabet is syllabic, like many of the alphabets of India and South East Asia. Each letter has an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels can be indicated using a variety of diacritics which appear above or below the main letter.
Syllables are separated by a dot.
Consonant clusters are written with special conjunct letters.

Used to write:

Tibetan (བོད་སྐད), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 6 million people in China (Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan), India, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and Nepal. In Mongolia Tibetan is considered the Classical language of Buddhism and was widely taught until quite recently.

Before 1949-50, Tibet comprised of three provinces: Amdo, now split between the Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces; Kham, now largely incorporated into the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai, and U-Tsang, which, together with western Kham, is now known as the Tibet Autonomous Region, which was created in 1965.

Dzongkha (Bhutanese) (རྫོང་ཁ), which is spoken by about 130,000 people in Bhutan, where it is the national language, and also in Nepal and India. It is a Sino-Tibetan language which is quite closely related to Tibetan and distantly related to Chinese.

The Tibetan alphabet

The form of the alphabet shown below, known as u-chen (དབུ་ཅན་) is used for printing. Cursive versions of the alphabet, such as the gyuk yig or 'flowing script' (རྒྱུག་ཡིག་) are used for informal writing.

Consonants

Tibetan consonants

Extra consonants for writing Sanskrit loan words

Conjunct consonants

Tibetan conjunct consonants

Vowels diacritics

Tibetan vowel diacritics

Numerals

Tibetan numerals

Sample text - Tibetan (དབུ་ཅན་: u-chen script)

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tinetan (u-chen scipt)

Sampe text - Tibetan (རྒྱུག་ཡིག་: gyuk yig script)

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tibetan (gyuk yig script)

Sampe text - Dzongkha

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Dzongkha

Translation

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.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Tibetan language courses, dictionaries and other materials

Links

Information about the Tibetan language and alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Tibetan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_script
http://www.tibet.dk

Online Tibetan lessons
http://www.learntibetan.net

Tibetan fonts and software
http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Tibetan.html
http://tsampa.org/tibetan/software/
http://www.nitartha.org/downloads.html
http://www.otani.ac.jp/cri/twrp/TLK/

Tibetan calligraphy
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/calligraphy
http://www.tibetan-calligraphy.com

Nitartha international - Tibetan software and online dictionary
http://www.nitartha.org/home.html

Tibetan dictionaries
http://eng-tib.zanwat.org
http://www.nitartha.org/dictionary_search04.html
http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Main_Page

The Tibetan language Institute - teaches Tibetan in Hamilton, Montana, USA
http://www.tibetanlanguage.org

Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library (THDL)
http://thdl.org

Tibetan Government in Exile's Official Web Site (includes information on Tibetan language and culture): http://www.tibet.com

Online Tibetan language news and radio
http://www.rfa.org/tibetan/
http://www.tibettimes.net

Center for Bhutan Studies (in English and Bhutanese)
http://www.bhutanstudies.org.bt

Khagyun: Stories from the Tibetan Diaspora
http://www.khagyun.org

Information about Tibetan medicine, buddhism and calligraphy (in French and English)
http://www.medecinetibet.org

Other syllabic alphabets

Ahom, Balinese, Batak, Bengali, Brahmi, Buhid, Burmese, Cham, Dehong Dai, Devanagari, Dhives Akuru, Ethiopic, Evēla Akuru, Grantha, Gujarati, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hanuno'o, Hmong, Javanese, Kannada, Kharosthi, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, Lepcha, Limbu, Lontara/Makasar, Malayalam, Manpuri, Modi, New Tai Lue, Oriya, Pallava, Phags-pa, Ranjana, Redjang, Shan, Sharda, Siddham, Sinhala, Sorang Sompeng, Sourashtra, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tocharian, Varang Kshiti

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