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Deleted the POV paragraph inserted by a Free Tibet liar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.51.95 ( talk) 13:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
There's really no point in creating a separate article for the written language. Why not merge? -- Jiang| (Talk)
But is this limited only to the Tibetan language? Armenia alphabet is an alphabet system, like Latin alphabet and Hangul is only a subset of Korean writing, not the entire system. The English language, Spanish language, etc. all cover their written components on the same page. I don't see the rationale behind the separation. The page isn't near getting too long. -- Jiang| (Talk) 08:42, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Maybe "Tibetan script" or "Tibetan alphabet" would be more representative of the article, like how we have an article on Chinese characters, since the grammar and most of everything else is still located in the main article. -- Jiang| (Talk) 22:06, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The Tibetan script is used to write other languages as well.
Umrao/217.88.115.5:
Please cite your sources. The Columbia Encyclopedia says the same thing. What have you got to say about this? -- Jia ng 21:59, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Nanshu has proposed not describing Tibetan as tonal. I appreciate the fact that tones are less critical in Tibetan than in Mandarin, but I think it is a mistake to not classify the language as tonal. Two well-respected reference I can point to are the SIL Ethnologue and www.omniglot.com.
Also, I think it is most accurate to describe Tibetan as primarily isolating although somewhat agglutinative. To describe it as purely agglutinative is clearly misleading. I take my lead on this from the the Columbia Encyclopedia entry on Sino-Tibetan languages [1] and another wonderful website that I can't seem to put my finger on right now.
On the topic of Sino-Tibetan as a proposed language family, we need to steer clear of Sino-Tibetan politics. While it is unfortunate that the PRC propaganda machine finds it useful to point to this language family as part of their political claims over Tibet, we must not loose sight of the fact that the vast majority of independent linguists also find the Sino-Tibetan family an appropriate family designation, based solely on the linguistic evidence. The 36th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages was just held this last November with not a sign of Beijing party bosses calling the shots. So I'm tweaking the wording to reflect this and ignoring the politics of it. technopilgrim 19:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What is the most significant feature of Tibetan to be added to the first sentence? Maybe not adding it is better. Before offering my opinion, I notice you that I don't speak, read, or write Tibetan at all. My interests are the Tibetan script and Tibetans' political interactions with the Mongols.
Classifing the language as tonal is inappropriate. Tone characterizes most dialects but most Amdo dialects lack it. The emergence of tone was far later in Tibetan than in Chinese. In addition, written Tibetan doesn't reflect tone.
Isolating or agglutinative. Maybe Tibetan is a language which the traditional claffisication doesn't work for well. Sapir's old clafficiation is interesting. I don't know which is more significant, but I personally think Tibetan is more agglutinative than isolating.
BovineBeast 15:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
A great deal of this article appears to have been lifted directly from Tournadre's Manual of Standard Tibetan, in violation of copyright.
The statement that adjectives follow nouns is quite simply wrong. Example - "Shi.mi.nak.bo" = black (nak.bo.) cat (shi.mi.) It should be noted that I am probably leaving out a silent letter or two, but if you read it as written you would be pronouncing correctly; a native speaker would understand you.
Interestly, the Tibetan word for table, "jok.tse." appears to be a Chinese loan-word (jwozi or chuo-tze).
The numbers 1-10 in Tibetan are clearly cognate with the same numbers in Cantonese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 ( talk) 07:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Sino-Tibetan isn't so clear as the Indo-European language family, and I don't like to mention to it without noticing its uncertainty, maybe because I tend to be skeptical. Linguists were inclined to set up bigger language families but it is carefully reviewed today. They framed the Altaic language family and some built up the "Ural-Altaic language family". But today, almost no linguist supports the latter and many even question the former because the relationships between the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are not confirmed even though Altaic languages share several features. Thus at least Japanese linguists vaguely call them "Altaic languages" instead of using the term "language family." The same is true of Sino-Tibetan "languages", I think. Apparently, Chinese and Tibetan share some basic words, but their relationship isn't established yet. And I'd like to speficy the uncertainty. "Proposed" may not be good because all language families are nothing more than hypotheses. I hope someone find a better term. -- Nanshu 23:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This is incorrect. Sino-Tibetan is much more widely accepted than Altaic. What is essential here is not "shared words" but predictable sound changes between the two. This means that if "mother" is "mxxqqqkw" in one and "gbvpln" in the other, it is wrong to immediately assume there is no relation. Rather, you should dig deeper to look for other things. If "father" is "qqqmxxst" in one and "plgbvrz" in the other, and "horse" is "xxmstkw" in one and "bvgrzn" in the other, it becomes slowly apparent that there are regular sound correspondences between words with identical or extremely similar meaning.
To filter out borrowed words, a "Swadesh list" of 207 vocabulary words is often used. While a word like "encyclopedic", "astronomy", or "empire" is very likely to be borrowed from a different language, words on the Swadesh list such as "sun", "mother", "I", "skin", "tree", and the like are much less likely to be borrowed as they are the "core vocabulary" of the language, and studies have shown that on average, the words on the Swadesh list are the 207 slowest-changing words (ie, they have the lowest rate of being borrowed).
Thus the evidence is solid - this is not a proposed language family, the only people who disagree with it are non-linguists or highly nationalistic linguists. -- Node 01:23, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There are markup issues in the last paragraph of Tibetan language#Evolution of Styles. It seems that there are issues with the number of ' used. I can't fix it myself, because I don't know if some of the ' are actually a part of a symbol, e.g. z'. If someone could fix this, that would be great, so it can be removed from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Syntax/double-quotes-065.txt.
– Foolip 13:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I will be going through and attempting to add Tibetan letters to the article where appropriate, but I don't know the language well enough to be fully confident of my accuracy. Any corrections will be most appreciated. Thanks!
Ethnologue lists the order of classification for the Tibetan language as Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Himalayish, Tibeto-Kanauri, Tibetic, and then the Tibetan language. Wikipedia seems to skip the group Tibetic. See this link: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90303 Any thoughts? --- User:Hottentot
What is the transliteration of བོད་ཡིག? I did some searching on Google, and I found the following names:
Please, can someone help me out? Thanks. -- Hottentot
"bod yig", "bod pa", and "bod skad" are all words meaning "tibetan". However, "bod skad" is, in my opinion, most accurate. In this case though I think it says "bod yig".
"bod pa" = 'a Tibetan (person)', "bod skad" = 'Tibetan language', "bod yig" = 'Tibetan script'. The form "bod-jig" is preferred by some scholars, especially in central and eastern Europe. Jakob37 08:58, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
i'm planning to do research on what, if any, influence the bon religion has had on the tibetan language and it's development. right now, i'm too busy doing research on the hebrew language- and trying to LEARN the hebrew language- to do much research on the tibetan language. Gringo300 11:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
does anyone know of a good tibetan font so I could see the characters properly? -- Revolución ( talk) 16:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
There are problems with the Tibetan script used on the main page; It may be because the font is just generic Unicode and not a specifically Tibetan font such as Tibetan Machine Uni. I am trying to find someone in the Wikipedia network who knows about how to specify fonts used in Wikipedia articles. "Tibetan Machine Uni" can be used both on Windows and Mac platforms, but more successfully on the former since it is an Open Type font. There is a font called Xenotype Tibetan which has been designed for the Mac, which is more attractive in a way since it also includes (by request?) a version of the dbu-med style which is more beautiful and also in common use in Tibet, unfortunately the keyboard entry program that goes with Xenotype fonts is much more primitive and awkward than the one available for Windows (Keyman).
--- Prof. Jakob Dempsey,YZU, Taiwan
Font issues: let's just put it simply: on the main article's page, the Tibetan script in the red panel at the top right does not display properly. (nor, as far as I can tell, anywhere else in Wikipedia where the script is displayed)Why not? and how can we fix it? (Also, I have no such problems with the script when using it in MS Word). Incidentally, some of this compliance with Unicode is browser-based. I cannot use my Unicode keyboard (Keyman) within Firefox, but it works within IE. But the Tibetan script in Wikipedia's articles appears faulty within both the Firefox and the IE environment. Jakob37 09:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Further bafflement - I was correcting something on the main page about Lhasa vowels -- hope nobody minds---and noticed that there was some Tibetan script within the Wiki-edit material which was properly stacked. Amazing, it can be done in Wikipedia! So, noting the still unstacked "bod•skad" in the red panel, I thought I would try to find some way to correct it, but lo and behold, when I opened up the Wiki-edit on the main page, it was displayed (stacked) correctly -- but then in a few seconds, it unstacked -- right before my eyes!! What is going on?! Jakob37 14:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I thought that editors of this page might be interested to know that discussions are currently underway regarded naming conventions for Tibet-related articles. The main issue involved is how Tibetan words should be romanised, which means it could ultimately influence the style of every article where Tibetan names or words are used. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan). - Nat Krause( Talk!) 22:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Acording to Lonely Planet Tibetan Language is closest to Burmese. Krause seems to think otherwise but failed to prove that. So, Mr. Krause the Tibetan specialist, what language is closest to Tibetan? Me 04:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
The Tibeto-Burman group has many sub-branches. Those that contain Tangut or Burmese are not particularly close to Tibetan. The languages to the west, south-west of Tibetan, such as Kinauri and Pattani, seem closer, but the languages closest to Tibetan are in the so-called Bodic sub-branch, which includes a number of small languages spoken in Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, for example Tamang and Gurung. Even closer are Kaike and Ghale, and then there are languages such as Sherpa (Nepal) and Monpa (east of Bhutan) which could actually be classed as Tibetan dialects. Tibetan proper has many dialects, often mutually unintelligible, but they all use the same script (although the script represents a different, more ancient dialect, and is only accessible to about 10% of the population). Jakob37 07:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Could the Dalai lama, and educated Tibetans read and or understand Myanmar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.211.144 ( talk) 04:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Stephen Hodge, thanks for your excellent contributions explaining verbs in Tibetan. If I could speak Tibetan I would be addressing you with the honorific mdzad to show my respect. Thanks for your scholarly and concise contributions to Wikipedia, I am now going to take the time to read more of them. -- technopilgrim 00:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Is pocha a Tibetan word? If so, can someone add the Tibetan script for this to the Butter tea article? Badagnani 09:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Obviously the word for tea is a loan word, as no tea is grown in Tibet. Dare I suggest that 'cha' came from Hanyu (Chinese)? 86.155.214.87 ( talk) 01:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Tibetan tea is 'bod ja', though in Tibet the word for tea 'ja' means butter tea unless one specifies otherwise. The word 'ja' like all words in the world for tea, comes from Chinese. The Chinese word goes back to something like 'la' in Old Chinese, which Sagart suggests is a borrowing from a Tibeto-Burman word for leaf. He has a nice dicusssion about this word in Roots of Old Chinese (1999). Tibetologist ( talk) 20:00, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for alerting me to this apparently important work which I have not yet seen, but how widely accepted is Zeisler's hypothesis ? If it does not yet have full acceptance as a normative explanation, the part dealing with aspect or otherwise should be worded appropriately.
One problem with this article is that it does not differentiate between Classical Tibetan (chos-skad), Medieval Tibetan and Modern Tibetan, spoken and literary. Thus the negative ma is most definitely used with the imperative stem in Classical Tibetan style, even if prohibitions use a present stem in Modern Tibetan.-- Stephen Hodge 17:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Long vowels also occur in some foreign loanwords, such as " Dalai Lama" ( Tibetan: ཏ་ཱལའི་བླ་མ་, Wylie: Taa-la’i Bla-ma; IPA: [taːlɛː lama]).
1) The above information, according to the authoritative Yu Dao-quan dictionary --- the only large dictionary I know of which has fairly accurate information on Lhasa Tibetan pronunciation, and don't mention Mel Goldstein, his information has been inaccurate for decades --- it's [talɛː lama], the "a-chung" is only written after the "t" because it's a foreign (Mongolian) word, so there's no traditional way. 2) The information on the vowels is incomplete: The two most extensive and detailed records of Lhasa Tibetan (the works of Chang and Shefts and the Tibetan-Chinese dictionary edited by Yu Dao-quan) both describe two additional vowels: an unrounded centralised mid-high front vowel, and a rounded centralised mid-high back vowel, heard for example in the verbs 'to arrive'<slebs> and 'to return' <log>. There may be other varieties of Central Tibetan which lack these spoken vowels, but since no other varieties have been extensively described, the issue remains moot. Also there is the central unrounded vowel as in "lab" (speak) which is also found extensively in vowel harmony environments. It's occurrence as a non-predictable phoneme may be somewhat marginal, but that's even more the case with the voiced "th" in English, which is nonetheless widely recognized as a phoneme. If agreeable, the above can be revised and distilled into properly formal text for the article. Jakob37 14:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
"kham" appears to be misspelled in the section on tones, with "na" replacing "ma". My computer doesn't deal well with Tibetan script, so I don't know how to correct this. -- Gimme danger 09:02, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Tibetan script? Thanks! Chris 03:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Goes as follows: "The Chinese authorities occupying Tibet are making life impossible for Tibetans who are not fluent in Mandarin Chinese by passing laws to minimise teaching of Tibetan in schools and by replacing Tibetan language with Chinese language in many spheres of public life." That's not neutral. 194.154.66.89 ( talk) 23:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Section Verbs says:
But the link Tibetan language provides a grammar by Silvia Vernetto and Tenzin Norbu, that quite the contrary indicates that the verb is conjugated in person: 1st vs. 2nd/3rd (see p26 of PDF!). Is that statement in section Verbs, really quite correct? ... said: Rursus ( bork²) 08:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I have looked at the two other Tibetan dialect pages - Kham and Amdo and have suggested these be renamed as Tibetan dialects. I wonder if this article is supposed to be focused on Central Tibetan dialect/U Ke/Lhasa Ke or is it supposed to be on "Standard Tibetan"? If it is supposed to be and article about "Standard Tibetan" then that is a bit contentious and has been debated and written about extensively by Tibetan scholars in Tibet, working in schools and universities etc, and those in the exile community. There appears to be no real consensus as to a "Standard Tibetan spoken language".-- Anythingpossible ( talk) 02:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The Standard Tibetan article has a subsection to this effect that is well-written, if a bit terse. It would seem to be an issue that has been overlooked in the Tibet article. How to address it? Moonsell ( talk) 08:58, 7 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry. I posted this on the wrong page. It was meant for the Tibet article's talk page. Moonsell ( talk) 09:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I've changed the definition in the introduction to read "...the official dialect...", not "language". Please see Talk:Khams_Tibetan_language and continue this discussion there. There is also a problem with Tibetan language redirecting to this article, as mentioned on that talk page. Moonsell ( talk) 12:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
This discussion thread has been adjourned to Talk:Tibetan languages under "One language, a number of dialects". Please see the continuation of it there. Moonsell ( talk) 11:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
The name of this dialect is ü kä ("central Tibetan"), not bö kä ("Tibetan language"). The Wylie for ü kä I believe is dbus-skad. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Does anyone know how to correct the Tibetan letters? Moonsell ( talk) 13:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The language presented here is "Standard Tibetan" spyi-skad /cikä/.[4] It corresponds to the language spoken in Central Tibet in the region of Lhasa, as well as among the diaspora community. This language is a variety of the "Central Tibetan" dbus-dkad /ükä/, spoken around Lhasa, which has become the lingua franca among Tibetans. It allows Tibetans living in other regions of Tibet (Amdo, Kham, Ngari, etc) and indeed those residing in China, India, Bhutan, Europe and North America, to communicate with one another whatever their native dialect yul-skad /yü:kä'/. The general term bod-skad /phökä'/, "Tibetan language", [7] is also sometimes used to describe the lingua franca, as are kha-skad /khakä/ spoken language or phalskad /phä:kä/ "ordinary language" - which differentiates it from Literary Tibetan yig-skad /yikkä'/.
Tibetan language currently redirects to Standard Tibetan. This is like having "English language" redirect to "BBC English". I feel we need a new page called "Tibetan language" which links here as well as to classical Tibetan, medieval Tibetan, etc, written Tibetan and the dialects of Kham, Amdo and Tö. It should also include history of the Tibetan language. This redirection prevents creating such a page. Does anyone have a problem with requesting this redirection to be taken away? Moonsell ( talk) 04:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I have put up a new set of proposed Tibetan naming conventions. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan)#New naming convention proposal. Your comments and feedback are requested.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Surely some reference to Tibetan pinyin being more commonly used for Tibetan placenames (particularly for smaller settlements, and for counties and prefectures) needs to be added to this section. Skinsmoke ( talk) 17:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
On the last paragraph of the intro: what does it mean to say that a language is "highly conservative", and is there evidence for that about Written Standard Tibetan?
I wrote up a new proposal for Tibetan naming conventions in late April, which met with predominantly favorable responses on the proposal's talk page. On the Naming conventions talk page, I have raised the question of how we can move toward making this a policy.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 01:21, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
as for " Bod skad, IPA: [pʰø̀ʔ kɛ]; ", why is there a "ʔ" after the first syllable but not after the second? Jakob37 ( talk) 08:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
"Three additional vowels are sometimes described as significantly distinct: ...and [ɛ̈] (an unrounded, centralised, mid front vowel), which is normally an allophone of [e]. These sounds normally occur in closed syllables;"
Sources vary on whether the [ɛ̈] phone (resulting from [e] in a closed syllable) and the [ɛ] phone (resulting from [a] through the i-mutation) are distinct or basically identical.
The vowels [i], [y], [e], [ø], and [ɛ] each have nasalized forms:
In all these matters, it might help to consult sections of my article (actually a review of a book on Amdo Tibetan) in Himalayan Research Bulletin v.XI (1991) p. 142-149. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1277&context=himalaya Jakob37 ( talk) 03:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
"But Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has noted that "within certain limits in the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression" and "the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored.""
within certain limits in the PRC does make efforts — is this quoted correctly? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 05:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I do not speak Tibetan or know anyone who does, but the learntibetan.net website states that their recordings are made by native speakers. If you follow this link http://www.learntibetan.net/grammar/subscribed.htm you may find a peculiar sound which is written as the "n" letter with a subscribed "r". There's an audio file and it's quite clearly a retroflex nasal. As i said, i do not know Tibetan so i cannot confirm if the difference is phonemic or whether the sound is present anywhere in the language apart from perhaps borrowings from Sanskrit, but this poor little phoneme deserves some attention in the article, i think.
An IP changed the pronunciation of Dbus from [y] to [wy], but also the alt. transcription from Ü to Wü, which I reverted. Should we keep the change in IPA? — kwami ( talk) 11:16, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
Until recently, the articles were arranged like this:
I initiated a move of Tibetan languages to Tibetic languages to reduce confusion between the standard forms and the various farflung local dialects.
I changed Tibetan language into a disambiguation page linking to Tibetic languages, Standard Tibetan, Classical Tibetan, and some other dialects. However, this was reverted, so Tibetan language currently redirects to Tibetic languages.
This is a bit of a sticky wicket. "Tibetan language" is often referred to, but what exactly does it mean? It seems that it could have any of several related but quite distinct meanings, depending on context. Hence, a disambiguation page. However, it seems unsatisfactory to have a disambiguation page with so many links poining to it, so I'm inclind to try to pick a primary sense. Aiming for least astonishment, I would guess that the least confusing option would be a redirect to the closest thing to a spoken standard; i.e., I suggest redirecting Tibetan language to Standard Tibetan. There should be a very clear disambiguation note at the top pointing at Classical Tibetan and Tibetic languages.
Generally, editors should avoid linking right to Tibetan language. If they mean the spoken standard, they should link to Standard Tibetan. If they mean the written language, they should link to Classical Tibetan. If they mean some other dialect, they should modify the text to specify which one, and link to that. If the currently available information is unclear which dialect is meant, or if the topic is explicitly trans-dialectal, then the link should go to Tibetic languages. Incidentally, I think it would be good have an article on written Tibetan that would survey the standard Classical form as well as more modern efforts toward a vernacular written Tibetan.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 23:09, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
---I agree with JorisvS. Tibetologist ( talk) 11:06, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages should not contain anything outside a list of "did you mean" entries. If there are complexities they should be explained in an article, not a disambig. Standard Tibetan already gives a good overview, and appears to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to boot. The lay user is going to get utterly lost on that disambig; they need the explanation given by the article. -- JaGa talk 15:58, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm extremely concerned with the factual accuracy of Tibetan language information given in this article.
The Tibetan term Pögä (བོད་སྐད།) and Pöyig (བོད་ཡིག།) refer to the whole Tibetan languages and Tibetan text (comparable with Chinese term "中文", text here indicate a certain language written in a certain script, i.e., Chinese language written in Chinese script and Tibetan language written in Tibetan script. In this sense, Dungan is (a dialect of/a) Chinese language 汉语 but not Chinese text 中文, Balti is (a dialect of/a) Tibetan language བོད་སྐད། but not Tibetan text བོད་ཡིག།). These two term have nothing to do with the Standard Tibetan, as the term "汉语"/"中文" have nothing to do with the Standard Chinese.
It's even not good to call Standard Tibetan "dbus". Instead, it should be called "Standard dbus" (comparably, "Standard Mandarin", etc.)
The term "Tibetic languages" is of linguistic use and should not be put into a high importance. Some French-school of scholars does not respect the traditional usage, and this has made considerably confusion among natives. To clarify this, below is a comparable counterpart of the current arrangement of the article Tibetan language:
French language may refers to:
Interesting? That’s exactly what a native feel when reading Tibetan language. Consequently, when a native chat with a European scholar they find they are using one term to refer totally different things.
The correct pronunciation in Standard Tibetan should be /wy/. This is important because pronounce it as /y/ may made it confused with yul /ɥy/=/jʷy/ (/ɥ/ or /jʷ/ is the semi-vowel of /y/ so it may be freely added). -- 202.108.128.82 ( talk) 08:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Regarding pronunciation, Tournadre (Manual of Standard Tibetan, pg. 444) says, "Finally, it should be noted that at the beginning of low-tone words, round vowels are often "labialized" and preceded by the sound [w]. Thus འོད་ /öʼ/ 'light' is pronounced wöʼ." So, judging by the "often" I gather that the transcription /y/ for དབུས་ is less typical than /wy/ but not totally wrong. I agree with 202 that /wy/ would be better.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 05:04, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
The difference between French and Tibetan is that French is much more standardized than Tibetan is (langues d'oïl are much more socially marginal than Tibetan dialects are), and Tibetan writing is even more conservative than French writing is. Consequently, French speech and writing are easily treated as one topic and related dialects are ignored, so "French language" can be treated as a single topic. The same circumstances do not apply to Tibetan.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 05:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I noticed that Tournadre and Sangda Dorje's book is called, in Tibetan, bod-kyi spyi-skad slob-deb. The first part, bod-kyi spyi-skad means Standard Tibetan. This would be written Bhökyi Chikä in Tournadre's transliteration (I would prefer a couple extra marks for clarity: Bhökyi Ĉhikä̀; but that is idiosyncratic), Bökyi Chiké in the THDL system, or roughly [pʰỳci t͡ɕíkɪ̂ː] in IPA. Now, this term is probably not used among Tibetans very widely, but then what term that means precisely "Standard Tibetan" is in wide usage? It could be useful to add as one of the Tibetan words for this linguistic phenomenon.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 01:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Tibetic languages#Historical phonology has had a "dubious" tag for quite a while now. What is 'baps actually pronounced like in Standard Tibetan, then? I haven't been able to find a description of how to convert written Tibetan into spoken Standard Tibetan syllables on English WP, but there is one on German WP, and it implies the pronunciation [(m)pàp]. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 22:13, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Some of the material here is not in the "Scholarship" section.
The table of tenses states that standard Tibetan has a past, present, future, and perfect ending. This is not true, from the grammar page: "Verbs in modern spoken Tibetan have between one and three stems. These are the present-future stem, the past stem and the imperative stem. Many verbs, however, only have one stem when spoken, remaining distinct only in writing, meaning that inflection is based mainly on the use of verbal auxiliaries. The verb is inflected by means of attaching suffixes to the verb stem in a similar way to nouns and pronouns." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.220.126.24 ( talk) 03:22, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Xun Gong has very convincingly argued there are 12 distinct vowel phonemes. The article should be amended, or at least acknowledge the existence of a controversy.
@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/ltba.19004.gon,
author = "Gong, Xun", title = "How many vowels are there in Lhasa Tibetan?", journal= "Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area", year = "2020", volume = "43", number = "2", pages = "225-254", doi = " https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.19004.gon", url = " https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ltba.19004.gon", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "0731-3500", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "vowels", keywords = "Lhasa Tibetan", keywords = "phonemicity", keywords = "transcription convention", abstract = "Abstract
Lhasa Tibetan is described in a number of independent research traditions which give different accounts of its phonology. To what extent do these discrepancies reflect real dialectal or idiolectal differences? To what extent do they reflect different analyses of the same system?
In this paper, we examine one aspect of Lhasa Tibetan phonology on which different descriptions show substantial discrepancies: vowels. Different descriptions of Lhasa Tibetan transcribe from 8 to more than 16 vowel qualities, ascribing to them different degrees of phonemicity. A detailed comparison of the transcription systems shows that all reflect the same underlying system of 12 vowel sounds, which agrees with the transcription conventions of the Seattle Tibetanists. The discrepancies among the systems mostly concern four vowels, namely ɔ, ə, ɪ and ʊ. These vowels, which started as allophonic variants of other vowels, later appear in a set of words which cannot be explained as allophony, and hence are unambiguous phonemes in contemporary Lhasa Tibetan.", } -- Tibetologist ( talk) 22:06, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
According to some sources, Lhasa Tibetan can feature prenasalized stops associated with a low tone. However, there are conflicting reports regarding their distribution: per Gong, Xun (2016). "Prenasalized reflex of Old Tibetan <ld-> and related clusters in Central Tibetan". Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale. 45: 127–147., this is a third phonemic series corresponding (mostly) to written mD-, 'D- that contrasts with plain unaspirated stops (generally deriving from other (C)CD- onsets). Meanwhile, [5] claims to detect prenasalization in སྦ sba, ད da (unstressed) and སྒ sga, i.e. as a free variant of unaspirated /p/, /t/, /k/ in low-tone words. Tournadre, Nicolas; Dorje, Sangda (2003). Manual of Standard Tibetan. p. 67. mentions two ‘variations’ of the unaspirated series in low-tone words, without making it clear whether they are lexically conditioned. All authors agree that the prenasalization is variable, optional and perhaps disappearing. 109.184.74.252 ( talk) 01:09, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
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Deleted the POV paragraph inserted by a Free Tibet liar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.51.95 ( talk) 13:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
There's really no point in creating a separate article for the written language. Why not merge? -- Jiang| (Talk)
But is this limited only to the Tibetan language? Armenia alphabet is an alphabet system, like Latin alphabet and Hangul is only a subset of Korean writing, not the entire system. The English language, Spanish language, etc. all cover their written components on the same page. I don't see the rationale behind the separation. The page isn't near getting too long. -- Jiang| (Talk) 08:42, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Maybe "Tibetan script" or "Tibetan alphabet" would be more representative of the article, like how we have an article on Chinese characters, since the grammar and most of everything else is still located in the main article. -- Jiang| (Talk) 22:06, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The Tibetan script is used to write other languages as well.
Umrao/217.88.115.5:
Please cite your sources. The Columbia Encyclopedia says the same thing. What have you got to say about this? -- Jia ng 21:59, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Nanshu has proposed not describing Tibetan as tonal. I appreciate the fact that tones are less critical in Tibetan than in Mandarin, but I think it is a mistake to not classify the language as tonal. Two well-respected reference I can point to are the SIL Ethnologue and www.omniglot.com.
Also, I think it is most accurate to describe Tibetan as primarily isolating although somewhat agglutinative. To describe it as purely agglutinative is clearly misleading. I take my lead on this from the the Columbia Encyclopedia entry on Sino-Tibetan languages [1] and another wonderful website that I can't seem to put my finger on right now.
On the topic of Sino-Tibetan as a proposed language family, we need to steer clear of Sino-Tibetan politics. While it is unfortunate that the PRC propaganda machine finds it useful to point to this language family as part of their political claims over Tibet, we must not loose sight of the fact that the vast majority of independent linguists also find the Sino-Tibetan family an appropriate family designation, based solely on the linguistic evidence. The 36th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages was just held this last November with not a sign of Beijing party bosses calling the shots. So I'm tweaking the wording to reflect this and ignoring the politics of it. technopilgrim 19:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What is the most significant feature of Tibetan to be added to the first sentence? Maybe not adding it is better. Before offering my opinion, I notice you that I don't speak, read, or write Tibetan at all. My interests are the Tibetan script and Tibetans' political interactions with the Mongols.
Classifing the language as tonal is inappropriate. Tone characterizes most dialects but most Amdo dialects lack it. The emergence of tone was far later in Tibetan than in Chinese. In addition, written Tibetan doesn't reflect tone.
Isolating or agglutinative. Maybe Tibetan is a language which the traditional claffisication doesn't work for well. Sapir's old clafficiation is interesting. I don't know which is more significant, but I personally think Tibetan is more agglutinative than isolating.
BovineBeast 15:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
A great deal of this article appears to have been lifted directly from Tournadre's Manual of Standard Tibetan, in violation of copyright.
The statement that adjectives follow nouns is quite simply wrong. Example - "Shi.mi.nak.bo" = black (nak.bo.) cat (shi.mi.) It should be noted that I am probably leaving out a silent letter or two, but if you read it as written you would be pronouncing correctly; a native speaker would understand you.
Interestly, the Tibetan word for table, "jok.tse." appears to be a Chinese loan-word (jwozi or chuo-tze).
The numbers 1-10 in Tibetan are clearly cognate with the same numbers in Cantonese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 ( talk) 07:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Sino-Tibetan isn't so clear as the Indo-European language family, and I don't like to mention to it without noticing its uncertainty, maybe because I tend to be skeptical. Linguists were inclined to set up bigger language families but it is carefully reviewed today. They framed the Altaic language family and some built up the "Ural-Altaic language family". But today, almost no linguist supports the latter and many even question the former because the relationships between the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are not confirmed even though Altaic languages share several features. Thus at least Japanese linguists vaguely call them "Altaic languages" instead of using the term "language family." The same is true of Sino-Tibetan "languages", I think. Apparently, Chinese and Tibetan share some basic words, but their relationship isn't established yet. And I'd like to speficy the uncertainty. "Proposed" may not be good because all language families are nothing more than hypotheses. I hope someone find a better term. -- Nanshu 23:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This is incorrect. Sino-Tibetan is much more widely accepted than Altaic. What is essential here is not "shared words" but predictable sound changes between the two. This means that if "mother" is "mxxqqqkw" in one and "gbvpln" in the other, it is wrong to immediately assume there is no relation. Rather, you should dig deeper to look for other things. If "father" is "qqqmxxst" in one and "plgbvrz" in the other, and "horse" is "xxmstkw" in one and "bvgrzn" in the other, it becomes slowly apparent that there are regular sound correspondences between words with identical or extremely similar meaning.
To filter out borrowed words, a "Swadesh list" of 207 vocabulary words is often used. While a word like "encyclopedic", "astronomy", or "empire" is very likely to be borrowed from a different language, words on the Swadesh list such as "sun", "mother", "I", "skin", "tree", and the like are much less likely to be borrowed as they are the "core vocabulary" of the language, and studies have shown that on average, the words on the Swadesh list are the 207 slowest-changing words (ie, they have the lowest rate of being borrowed).
Thus the evidence is solid - this is not a proposed language family, the only people who disagree with it are non-linguists or highly nationalistic linguists. -- Node 01:23, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There are markup issues in the last paragraph of Tibetan language#Evolution of Styles. It seems that there are issues with the number of ' used. I can't fix it myself, because I don't know if some of the ' are actually a part of a symbol, e.g. z'. If someone could fix this, that would be great, so it can be removed from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Syntax/double-quotes-065.txt.
– Foolip 13:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I will be going through and attempting to add Tibetan letters to the article where appropriate, but I don't know the language well enough to be fully confident of my accuracy. Any corrections will be most appreciated. Thanks!
Ethnologue lists the order of classification for the Tibetan language as Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Himalayish, Tibeto-Kanauri, Tibetic, and then the Tibetan language. Wikipedia seems to skip the group Tibetic. See this link: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90303 Any thoughts? --- User:Hottentot
What is the transliteration of བོད་ཡིག? I did some searching on Google, and I found the following names:
Please, can someone help me out? Thanks. -- Hottentot
"bod yig", "bod pa", and "bod skad" are all words meaning "tibetan". However, "bod skad" is, in my opinion, most accurate. In this case though I think it says "bod yig".
"bod pa" = 'a Tibetan (person)', "bod skad" = 'Tibetan language', "bod yig" = 'Tibetan script'. The form "bod-jig" is preferred by some scholars, especially in central and eastern Europe. Jakob37 08:58, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
i'm planning to do research on what, if any, influence the bon religion has had on the tibetan language and it's development. right now, i'm too busy doing research on the hebrew language- and trying to LEARN the hebrew language- to do much research on the tibetan language. Gringo300 11:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
does anyone know of a good tibetan font so I could see the characters properly? -- Revolución ( talk) 16:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
There are problems with the Tibetan script used on the main page; It may be because the font is just generic Unicode and not a specifically Tibetan font such as Tibetan Machine Uni. I am trying to find someone in the Wikipedia network who knows about how to specify fonts used in Wikipedia articles. "Tibetan Machine Uni" can be used both on Windows and Mac platforms, but more successfully on the former since it is an Open Type font. There is a font called Xenotype Tibetan which has been designed for the Mac, which is more attractive in a way since it also includes (by request?) a version of the dbu-med style which is more beautiful and also in common use in Tibet, unfortunately the keyboard entry program that goes with Xenotype fonts is much more primitive and awkward than the one available for Windows (Keyman).
--- Prof. Jakob Dempsey,YZU, Taiwan
Font issues: let's just put it simply: on the main article's page, the Tibetan script in the red panel at the top right does not display properly. (nor, as far as I can tell, anywhere else in Wikipedia where the script is displayed)Why not? and how can we fix it? (Also, I have no such problems with the script when using it in MS Word). Incidentally, some of this compliance with Unicode is browser-based. I cannot use my Unicode keyboard (Keyman) within Firefox, but it works within IE. But the Tibetan script in Wikipedia's articles appears faulty within both the Firefox and the IE environment. Jakob37 09:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Further bafflement - I was correcting something on the main page about Lhasa vowels -- hope nobody minds---and noticed that there was some Tibetan script within the Wiki-edit material which was properly stacked. Amazing, it can be done in Wikipedia! So, noting the still unstacked "bod•skad" in the red panel, I thought I would try to find some way to correct it, but lo and behold, when I opened up the Wiki-edit on the main page, it was displayed (stacked) correctly -- but then in a few seconds, it unstacked -- right before my eyes!! What is going on?! Jakob37 14:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I thought that editors of this page might be interested to know that discussions are currently underway regarded naming conventions for Tibet-related articles. The main issue involved is how Tibetan words should be romanised, which means it could ultimately influence the style of every article where Tibetan names or words are used. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan). - Nat Krause( Talk!) 22:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Acording to Lonely Planet Tibetan Language is closest to Burmese. Krause seems to think otherwise but failed to prove that. So, Mr. Krause the Tibetan specialist, what language is closest to Tibetan? Me 04:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
The Tibeto-Burman group has many sub-branches. Those that contain Tangut or Burmese are not particularly close to Tibetan. The languages to the west, south-west of Tibetan, such as Kinauri and Pattani, seem closer, but the languages closest to Tibetan are in the so-called Bodic sub-branch, which includes a number of small languages spoken in Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, for example Tamang and Gurung. Even closer are Kaike and Ghale, and then there are languages such as Sherpa (Nepal) and Monpa (east of Bhutan) which could actually be classed as Tibetan dialects. Tibetan proper has many dialects, often mutually unintelligible, but they all use the same script (although the script represents a different, more ancient dialect, and is only accessible to about 10% of the population). Jakob37 07:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Could the Dalai lama, and educated Tibetans read and or understand Myanmar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.211.144 ( talk) 04:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Stephen Hodge, thanks for your excellent contributions explaining verbs in Tibetan. If I could speak Tibetan I would be addressing you with the honorific mdzad to show my respect. Thanks for your scholarly and concise contributions to Wikipedia, I am now going to take the time to read more of them. -- technopilgrim 00:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Is pocha a Tibetan word? If so, can someone add the Tibetan script for this to the Butter tea article? Badagnani 09:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Obviously the word for tea is a loan word, as no tea is grown in Tibet. Dare I suggest that 'cha' came from Hanyu (Chinese)? 86.155.214.87 ( talk) 01:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Tibetan tea is 'bod ja', though in Tibet the word for tea 'ja' means butter tea unless one specifies otherwise. The word 'ja' like all words in the world for tea, comes from Chinese. The Chinese word goes back to something like 'la' in Old Chinese, which Sagart suggests is a borrowing from a Tibeto-Burman word for leaf. He has a nice dicusssion about this word in Roots of Old Chinese (1999). Tibetologist ( talk) 20:00, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for alerting me to this apparently important work which I have not yet seen, but how widely accepted is Zeisler's hypothesis ? If it does not yet have full acceptance as a normative explanation, the part dealing with aspect or otherwise should be worded appropriately.
One problem with this article is that it does not differentiate between Classical Tibetan (chos-skad), Medieval Tibetan and Modern Tibetan, spoken and literary. Thus the negative ma is most definitely used with the imperative stem in Classical Tibetan style, even if prohibitions use a present stem in Modern Tibetan.-- Stephen Hodge 17:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Long vowels also occur in some foreign loanwords, such as " Dalai Lama" ( Tibetan: ཏ་ཱལའི་བླ་མ་, Wylie: Taa-la’i Bla-ma; IPA: [taːlɛː lama]).
1) The above information, according to the authoritative Yu Dao-quan dictionary --- the only large dictionary I know of which has fairly accurate information on Lhasa Tibetan pronunciation, and don't mention Mel Goldstein, his information has been inaccurate for decades --- it's [talɛː lama], the "a-chung" is only written after the "t" because it's a foreign (Mongolian) word, so there's no traditional way. 2) The information on the vowels is incomplete: The two most extensive and detailed records of Lhasa Tibetan (the works of Chang and Shefts and the Tibetan-Chinese dictionary edited by Yu Dao-quan) both describe two additional vowels: an unrounded centralised mid-high front vowel, and a rounded centralised mid-high back vowel, heard for example in the verbs 'to arrive'<slebs> and 'to return' <log>. There may be other varieties of Central Tibetan which lack these spoken vowels, but since no other varieties have been extensively described, the issue remains moot. Also there is the central unrounded vowel as in "lab" (speak) which is also found extensively in vowel harmony environments. It's occurrence as a non-predictable phoneme may be somewhat marginal, but that's even more the case with the voiced "th" in English, which is nonetheless widely recognized as a phoneme. If agreeable, the above can be revised and distilled into properly formal text for the article. Jakob37 14:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
"kham" appears to be misspelled in the section on tones, with "na" replacing "ma". My computer doesn't deal well with Tibetan script, so I don't know how to correct this. -- Gimme danger 09:02, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Tibetan script? Thanks! Chris 03:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Goes as follows: "The Chinese authorities occupying Tibet are making life impossible for Tibetans who are not fluent in Mandarin Chinese by passing laws to minimise teaching of Tibetan in schools and by replacing Tibetan language with Chinese language in many spheres of public life." That's not neutral. 194.154.66.89 ( talk) 23:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Section Verbs says:
But the link Tibetan language provides a grammar by Silvia Vernetto and Tenzin Norbu, that quite the contrary indicates that the verb is conjugated in person: 1st vs. 2nd/3rd (see p26 of PDF!). Is that statement in section Verbs, really quite correct? ... said: Rursus ( bork²) 08:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I have looked at the two other Tibetan dialect pages - Kham and Amdo and have suggested these be renamed as Tibetan dialects. I wonder if this article is supposed to be focused on Central Tibetan dialect/U Ke/Lhasa Ke or is it supposed to be on "Standard Tibetan"? If it is supposed to be and article about "Standard Tibetan" then that is a bit contentious and has been debated and written about extensively by Tibetan scholars in Tibet, working in schools and universities etc, and those in the exile community. There appears to be no real consensus as to a "Standard Tibetan spoken language".-- Anythingpossible ( talk) 02:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The Standard Tibetan article has a subsection to this effect that is well-written, if a bit terse. It would seem to be an issue that has been overlooked in the Tibet article. How to address it? Moonsell ( talk) 08:58, 7 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry. I posted this on the wrong page. It was meant for the Tibet article's talk page. Moonsell ( talk) 09:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I've changed the definition in the introduction to read "...the official dialect...", not "language". Please see Talk:Khams_Tibetan_language and continue this discussion there. There is also a problem with Tibetan language redirecting to this article, as mentioned on that talk page. Moonsell ( talk) 12:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
This discussion thread has been adjourned to Talk:Tibetan languages under "One language, a number of dialects". Please see the continuation of it there. Moonsell ( talk) 11:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
The name of this dialect is ü kä ("central Tibetan"), not bö kä ("Tibetan language"). The Wylie for ü kä I believe is dbus-skad. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Does anyone know how to correct the Tibetan letters? Moonsell ( talk) 13:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The language presented here is "Standard Tibetan" spyi-skad /cikä/.[4] It corresponds to the language spoken in Central Tibet in the region of Lhasa, as well as among the diaspora community. This language is a variety of the "Central Tibetan" dbus-dkad /ükä/, spoken around Lhasa, which has become the lingua franca among Tibetans. It allows Tibetans living in other regions of Tibet (Amdo, Kham, Ngari, etc) and indeed those residing in China, India, Bhutan, Europe and North America, to communicate with one another whatever their native dialect yul-skad /yü:kä'/. The general term bod-skad /phökä'/, "Tibetan language", [7] is also sometimes used to describe the lingua franca, as are kha-skad /khakä/ spoken language or phalskad /phä:kä/ "ordinary language" - which differentiates it from Literary Tibetan yig-skad /yikkä'/.
Tibetan language currently redirects to Standard Tibetan. This is like having "English language" redirect to "BBC English". I feel we need a new page called "Tibetan language" which links here as well as to classical Tibetan, medieval Tibetan, etc, written Tibetan and the dialects of Kham, Amdo and Tö. It should also include history of the Tibetan language. This redirection prevents creating such a page. Does anyone have a problem with requesting this redirection to be taken away? Moonsell ( talk) 04:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I have put up a new set of proposed Tibetan naming conventions. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan)#New naming convention proposal. Your comments and feedback are requested.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Surely some reference to Tibetan pinyin being more commonly used for Tibetan placenames (particularly for smaller settlements, and for counties and prefectures) needs to be added to this section. Skinsmoke ( talk) 17:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
On the last paragraph of the intro: what does it mean to say that a language is "highly conservative", and is there evidence for that about Written Standard Tibetan?
I wrote up a new proposal for Tibetan naming conventions in late April, which met with predominantly favorable responses on the proposal's talk page. On the Naming conventions talk page, I have raised the question of how we can move toward making this a policy.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 01:21, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
as for " Bod skad, IPA: [pʰø̀ʔ kɛ]; ", why is there a "ʔ" after the first syllable but not after the second? Jakob37 ( talk) 08:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
"Three additional vowels are sometimes described as significantly distinct: ...and [ɛ̈] (an unrounded, centralised, mid front vowel), which is normally an allophone of [e]. These sounds normally occur in closed syllables;"
Sources vary on whether the [ɛ̈] phone (resulting from [e] in a closed syllable) and the [ɛ] phone (resulting from [a] through the i-mutation) are distinct or basically identical.
The vowels [i], [y], [e], [ø], and [ɛ] each have nasalized forms:
In all these matters, it might help to consult sections of my article (actually a review of a book on Amdo Tibetan) in Himalayan Research Bulletin v.XI (1991) p. 142-149. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1277&context=himalaya Jakob37 ( talk) 03:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
"But Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has noted that "within certain limits in the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression" and "the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored.""
within certain limits in the PRC does make efforts — is this quoted correctly? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 05:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I do not speak Tibetan or know anyone who does, but the learntibetan.net website states that their recordings are made by native speakers. If you follow this link http://www.learntibetan.net/grammar/subscribed.htm you may find a peculiar sound which is written as the "n" letter with a subscribed "r". There's an audio file and it's quite clearly a retroflex nasal. As i said, i do not know Tibetan so i cannot confirm if the difference is phonemic or whether the sound is present anywhere in the language apart from perhaps borrowings from Sanskrit, but this poor little phoneme deserves some attention in the article, i think.
An IP changed the pronunciation of Dbus from [y] to [wy], but also the alt. transcription from Ü to Wü, which I reverted. Should we keep the change in IPA? — kwami ( talk) 11:16, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
Until recently, the articles were arranged like this:
I initiated a move of Tibetan languages to Tibetic languages to reduce confusion between the standard forms and the various farflung local dialects.
I changed Tibetan language into a disambiguation page linking to Tibetic languages, Standard Tibetan, Classical Tibetan, and some other dialects. However, this was reverted, so Tibetan language currently redirects to Tibetic languages.
This is a bit of a sticky wicket. "Tibetan language" is often referred to, but what exactly does it mean? It seems that it could have any of several related but quite distinct meanings, depending on context. Hence, a disambiguation page. However, it seems unsatisfactory to have a disambiguation page with so many links poining to it, so I'm inclind to try to pick a primary sense. Aiming for least astonishment, I would guess that the least confusing option would be a redirect to the closest thing to a spoken standard; i.e., I suggest redirecting Tibetan language to Standard Tibetan. There should be a very clear disambiguation note at the top pointing at Classical Tibetan and Tibetic languages.
Generally, editors should avoid linking right to Tibetan language. If they mean the spoken standard, they should link to Standard Tibetan. If they mean the written language, they should link to Classical Tibetan. If they mean some other dialect, they should modify the text to specify which one, and link to that. If the currently available information is unclear which dialect is meant, or if the topic is explicitly trans-dialectal, then the link should go to Tibetic languages. Incidentally, I think it would be good have an article on written Tibetan that would survey the standard Classical form as well as more modern efforts toward a vernacular written Tibetan.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 23:09, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
---I agree with JorisvS. Tibetologist ( talk) 11:06, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages should not contain anything outside a list of "did you mean" entries. If there are complexities they should be explained in an article, not a disambig. Standard Tibetan already gives a good overview, and appears to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to boot. The lay user is going to get utterly lost on that disambig; they need the explanation given by the article. -- JaGa talk 15:58, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm extremely concerned with the factual accuracy of Tibetan language information given in this article.
The Tibetan term Pögä (བོད་སྐད།) and Pöyig (བོད་ཡིག།) refer to the whole Tibetan languages and Tibetan text (comparable with Chinese term "中文", text here indicate a certain language written in a certain script, i.e., Chinese language written in Chinese script and Tibetan language written in Tibetan script. In this sense, Dungan is (a dialect of/a) Chinese language 汉语 but not Chinese text 中文, Balti is (a dialect of/a) Tibetan language བོད་སྐད། but not Tibetan text བོད་ཡིག།). These two term have nothing to do with the Standard Tibetan, as the term "汉语"/"中文" have nothing to do with the Standard Chinese.
It's even not good to call Standard Tibetan "dbus". Instead, it should be called "Standard dbus" (comparably, "Standard Mandarin", etc.)
The term "Tibetic languages" is of linguistic use and should not be put into a high importance. Some French-school of scholars does not respect the traditional usage, and this has made considerably confusion among natives. To clarify this, below is a comparable counterpart of the current arrangement of the article Tibetan language:
French language may refers to:
Interesting? That’s exactly what a native feel when reading Tibetan language. Consequently, when a native chat with a European scholar they find they are using one term to refer totally different things.
The correct pronunciation in Standard Tibetan should be /wy/. This is important because pronounce it as /y/ may made it confused with yul /ɥy/=/jʷy/ (/ɥ/ or /jʷ/ is the semi-vowel of /y/ so it may be freely added). -- 202.108.128.82 ( talk) 08:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Regarding pronunciation, Tournadre (Manual of Standard Tibetan, pg. 444) says, "Finally, it should be noted that at the beginning of low-tone words, round vowels are often "labialized" and preceded by the sound [w]. Thus འོད་ /öʼ/ 'light' is pronounced wöʼ." So, judging by the "often" I gather that the transcription /y/ for དབུས་ is less typical than /wy/ but not totally wrong. I agree with 202 that /wy/ would be better.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 05:04, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
The difference between French and Tibetan is that French is much more standardized than Tibetan is (langues d'oïl are much more socially marginal than Tibetan dialects are), and Tibetan writing is even more conservative than French writing is. Consequently, French speech and writing are easily treated as one topic and related dialects are ignored, so "French language" can be treated as a single topic. The same circumstances do not apply to Tibetan.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 05:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I noticed that Tournadre and Sangda Dorje's book is called, in Tibetan, bod-kyi spyi-skad slob-deb. The first part, bod-kyi spyi-skad means Standard Tibetan. This would be written Bhökyi Chikä in Tournadre's transliteration (I would prefer a couple extra marks for clarity: Bhökyi Ĉhikä̀; but that is idiosyncratic), Bökyi Chiké in the THDL system, or roughly [pʰỳci t͡ɕíkɪ̂ː] in IPA. Now, this term is probably not used among Tibetans very widely, but then what term that means precisely "Standard Tibetan" is in wide usage? It could be useful to add as one of the Tibetan words for this linguistic phenomenon.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 01:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Tibetic languages#Historical phonology has had a "dubious" tag for quite a while now. What is 'baps actually pronounced like in Standard Tibetan, then? I haven't been able to find a description of how to convert written Tibetan into spoken Standard Tibetan syllables on English WP, but there is one on German WP, and it implies the pronunciation [(m)pàp]. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 22:13, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Some of the material here is not in the "Scholarship" section.
The table of tenses states that standard Tibetan has a past, present, future, and perfect ending. This is not true, from the grammar page: "Verbs in modern spoken Tibetan have between one and three stems. These are the present-future stem, the past stem and the imperative stem. Many verbs, however, only have one stem when spoken, remaining distinct only in writing, meaning that inflection is based mainly on the use of verbal auxiliaries. The verb is inflected by means of attaching suffixes to the verb stem in a similar way to nouns and pronouns." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.220.126.24 ( talk) 03:22, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Xun Gong has very convincingly argued there are 12 distinct vowel phonemes. The article should be amended, or at least acknowledge the existence of a controversy.
@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/ltba.19004.gon,
author = "Gong, Xun", title = "How many vowels are there in Lhasa Tibetan?", journal= "Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area", year = "2020", volume = "43", number = "2", pages = "225-254", doi = " https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.19004.gon", url = " https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ltba.19004.gon", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "0731-3500", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "vowels", keywords = "Lhasa Tibetan", keywords = "phonemicity", keywords = "transcription convention", abstract = "Abstract
Lhasa Tibetan is described in a number of independent research traditions which give different accounts of its phonology. To what extent do these discrepancies reflect real dialectal or idiolectal differences? To what extent do they reflect different analyses of the same system?
In this paper, we examine one aspect of Lhasa Tibetan phonology on which different descriptions show substantial discrepancies: vowels. Different descriptions of Lhasa Tibetan transcribe from 8 to more than 16 vowel qualities, ascribing to them different degrees of phonemicity. A detailed comparison of the transcription systems shows that all reflect the same underlying system of 12 vowel sounds, which agrees with the transcription conventions of the Seattle Tibetanists. The discrepancies among the systems mostly concern four vowels, namely ɔ, ə, ɪ and ʊ. These vowels, which started as allophonic variants of other vowels, later appear in a set of words which cannot be explained as allophony, and hence are unambiguous phonemes in contemporary Lhasa Tibetan.", } -- Tibetologist ( talk) 22:06, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
According to some sources, Lhasa Tibetan can feature prenasalized stops associated with a low tone. However, there are conflicting reports regarding their distribution: per Gong, Xun (2016). "Prenasalized reflex of Old Tibetan <ld-> and related clusters in Central Tibetan". Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale. 45: 127–147., this is a third phonemic series corresponding (mostly) to written mD-, 'D- that contrasts with plain unaspirated stops (generally deriving from other (C)CD- onsets). Meanwhile, [5] claims to detect prenasalization in སྦ sba, ད da (unstressed) and སྒ sga, i.e. as a free variant of unaspirated /p/, /t/, /k/ in low-tone words. Tournadre, Nicolas; Dorje, Sangda (2003). Manual of Standard Tibetan. p. 67. mentions two ‘variations’ of the unaspirated series in low-tone words, without making it clear whether they are lexically conditioned. All authors agree that the prenasalization is variable, optional and perhaps disappearing. 109.184.74.252 ( talk) 01:09, 23 February 2024 (UTC)