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Do we want to split off a Standard Tibetan article for the grammar, and leave the dialects / languages behind here? kwami ( talk) 16:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea to me. Tibetologist ( talk) 17:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I've added the Unreferenced template - as there was only a single reference in the whole article-and that reference was a broken link to another website.
A lot of things concerning Tibetan languages are hotly debated amongst linguists - and I think the article also needs to reflect these differing views. Chris Fynn ( talk) 07:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure about how the terminology is commonly used for classification, but I would think that "Tsang dialects" would not normally be classed under "Ü", since Tsang is commonly opposed to various Lhasa/standard/capital categories (Tsang is the region around Shigatse while Ü is the region around Lhasa). Should we simply replace "Ü" with "Ü-Tsang"?— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Shouldn't we have an article on the written norm of Tibetan, and make it the default redirection for Tibetan language? It's the base of Standard Tibetan in the diaspora and almost all written expressions, in Tibet or otherwise. (The Bhutan chos-skad is the same language, I guess?) 84.103.16.6 ( talk) 23:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
This discussion continues from ones that started on Talk:Khams_Tibetan_language and Talk:Amdo Tibetan language. The other day I asked here for us to continue it in the former place in accordance with Wikipedia policy to keep to the page where it started so as to avoid duplications over talk pages. Kwami has requested the discussion be moved here, as this page is more central and I've agreed that makes sense. This actually rolls a number of discussions into one, and in a nutshell, this is the way I see it.
At the beginning of the introduction of Melvyn Goldstein's Modern Literary Tibetan, 2nd edn 1977, (p. xvi), Goldstein makes it clear that he sees "the Tibetan language" as one thing. He refers to it twice:
Recent political events in Tibet have triggered a veritable revolution in the Tibetan language. A new genre of modern written Tibetan has emerged which includes the printed materials emanating from China, Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim and India, and which differs from classical Tibetan to a degree that makes it unintelligible even to scholars who are competent in the classical genre.
The confrontation of the Tibetan language with both modern politics (particularly communist) and modern technology resulted in the borrowing and creation of thousands upon thousands of new vocabulary items as well as certain characteristic stylistic and grammatical modes of expression. A new written style arose.
There is not more than one Tibetan language.
Nicolas Tournadre in his Manual of Standard Tibetan, Snow Lion 2003: 25 has this in the Introduction:
1. The Tibetan language
Tibetan belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages. This group encomasses about two hundred and fifty languages, spoken mainly in the Himalayas, on the Tibetan plateau and in the vicinity of the Mekong and the Salween .Within this linguistic family there are only two ancient literary languages: Burmese (12th century) and Tibetan (7th century). While very different, the common parentage of these two languages means that they share certain characteristics of phonology, syntax and vocabulary...
With the exception of Burmese, Tibetan, both in terms of syntax and vocabulary is entirely different from the other major languages of the region: Chinese, Hindi, Nepali, the Turkish languages (Uigur, Kazakh, Tatar, etc) and Mongolian.
Tibetan in its various dialects is spoken over an area the size of Western Europe, stretching from Baltistan (Pakistan) in the west, to Sichuan (China) in the east. To the north, the linguistic range of Tibetan extends beyond Lake Kokonor (in the province of Qinghai, China). Its southern limits are the southern slopes of the Himalaya, encompassing the independent state of Bhutan, Sikkim (India), the high valleys of Mustang and Dölpo, and Solukhumbu (Nepal), the region of Everest inhabited by the Sherpas of Nepal.
So the varieties of a single Tibetan language in Amdo, Kham, etc are not really languages themselves but rather, dialects. So, then, Central Tibetan is another dialect and standard Tibetan, which Tournadre (same page) treats as deriving from it is another dialect too. This is not surprising, since they share written Tibetan and are mutually intelligible through it, just as the dialects of English share those of written English.
All this affects a few of our articles. Instead of "Tibetan languages", this article needs to be renamed to "Tibetan language" and the content cleaned up accordingly. The articles on the dialects need to be renamed where they have the word "language" in their names and cleaned up. Tibetan language, which currently redirects to standard Tibetan needs to stop redirecting there, as "Tibetan language" will already have become the name of what was previously "Tibetan languages".
Can we start by please looking for *any* reliable source that claims Tibetan is not just one language plus a number of dialects. What do people think?
Tibetologist has already replied to previous strands of this discussion on 14 March with:
The Tibetan language family is as varied as the Romance family. Linguistic works on Tibetan languages refer to them as such. This article does not need to be changed.
I would like to ask for elaboration on these sources. Kwami on 15 March had a suggestion for which sources to follow:
Follow the ISO link in the info box, for one.
I cannot understand this comment but am keen to learn more.
Moonsell ( talk) 10:58, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
P.S. Another article needing cleanup is http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Research_on_Tibetan_Languages:_A_Bibliography. Moonsell ( talk) 11:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
In general the various varieties of Tibetan are often referred to as 'dialects'. Unsurprizingly, Sherpa, Ladakhi, Balti, and Dzongkha (i.e. the varieties of Tibetan spoken outside the PRC) are usually referred to as different languages. It would be inappropriate to follow this method in Wikipedia because it is intellectually incoherent. Either Balti and Dzongka are Tibetan dialects or Amdo is a Tibetan language. I would be happy with either solution, but prefer referring to all of the subbranches of the TIbetan family as 'languages'. Tournadre has made the comparison with Romance explicitly. Tibetan languages are as different as French and Spanish. cf. page 17 of [1] or even better the first page of this one
Based on my 20 years of field work throughout the Tibetan language area and on the
existing literature, I estimate that there are 220 ‘Tibetan dialects’ derived from Old Tibetan and nowadays spread across 5 countries: China, India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan. As I discuss in Tournadre (in progress), these dialects may be classed within 25 dialect groups, i. e. groups which do not allow mutual intelligibility. The notion of ‘dialect group’ is equivalent to the notion of language but does not entail any standardization. Thus if we set aside the notion of standardization, I believe it would be more appropriate to speak of 25 languages derived from Old Tibetan. This is not only a terminological issue but it gives an entirely different perception
of the range of variation. When we refer to 25 languages, we make clear that we are dealing with a family comparable in size to the Romance family which has 19 groups of dialects.
Please also take note of the title of Zeisler's book Relative tense and aspectual values in Tibetan languages: a comparative study. It is clear that experts in the field refer to these langauges as separate languages, not as dialects. Tibetologist ( talk) 09:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I added mention of the language of West Tibet (tö ke, stod-skad) to the pages on Amdo and Khams languages. Tibetans commonly speak of this as the fourth form of Tibetan. It is my understanding that they do not call it "Ladakhi" or think of it as the same language as Ladakhi. People have changed the red links to "west Tibetan" to point to Ladakhi language. Is there something I need to learn here about the relation between the west Tibetan and Ladakhi languages? Moonsell ( talk) 01:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Fortunately for us, the Tournadre article that Tibetologist mentions above is available on Tournadre's website: " Arguments against the Concept of ‘Conjunct’/‘Disjunct’ in Tibetan". Here is his summary of the 25 Tibetan dialect groups or Tibetic languages (in a footnote, he points out that another researcher has used "Tibetic" to refer to a group consisting of the languages/dialects descended from Old Tibetan + Kanauri + Tamangic, and Ethnologue has picked up this usage, but he, Tournadre, prefers to use "Tibetic" to refer specifically the languages/dialects descended from Old Tibetan). He describes the first 12 as major and the others as minor dialect groups, the latter often including only one dialect with a few thousand speakers or fewer.
Major dialect groups:
We should probably incorporate this information into the article, if it's the most authoritative available classification.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 04:13, 26 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?) 23:33, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Moved to Tibetic languages Mike Cline ( talk) 19:35, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
Tibetan languages →
Tibetic languages – Per Tournadre's classification. I think the current title can be confusing since it's really about a language family but readers will expect "Tibetan language" to be a specific language (either the standard spoken or the written form).
Tibetan language is also a redirect to this article. I would suggest that that article should be a disambiguation linking to
Tibetic languages,
Classical Tibetan,
Standard Tibetan, and Kham and Amdo for good measure.
Greg Pandatshang (
talk)
02:16, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I have started a discussion at Talk:Standard Tibetan.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 22:54, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't think text about Tshangla should be included. When this article was moved to Tibetic languages at my suggestion, my idea was to use the term specifically in Nicolas Tournadre's sense: by definition, Tibetic languages are those descended from Old Tibetan, what might informally be called "dialects of Tibetan". Tshangla seems to be a close cousin of these languages. I would suggest moving the text in question to Bodish languages.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 18:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
These are a list of works written by various Tibetologists from from 19th and early 20th centuries, on various Tibetic languages and Classical Tibetan. Includes grammars, dictionaries, etc.
Tibetan Manual By Vincent C. Henderson, rev. Edward Amundsen
Primer of Standard Tibetan By Edward Amundsen
A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, in English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
A grammar of the Tibetan language, in English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
Grammar of the Tibetan Language By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, József Terjék
Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English (1834)
https://archive.org/details/essaytowardsadi00tshgoog
https://archive.org/details/essaytowardsadi01tshgoog
Essay towards a dictionary, Tibetan and English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Saṅs-rgyas-phun-tshogs
Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English: Prepared, with the Assistance of Bandé Sangs-rgyas Phun-tshogs, a Learned Láma of Zangskár By Sandor Csoma De Koros, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös
Körösi Csoma Sandor dolgozatai By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Tivadar Duka
Bell's colloquial Tibetan English dictionaries and grammars
https://archive.org/details/englishtibetanco00bellrich https://archive.org/stream/englishtibetanco00bellrich/englishtibetanco00bellrich_djvu.txt
https://archive.org/details/grammarofcolloqu00bellrich
Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan By C. A. Bell
Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan By Sir Charles Alfred Bell
Manual of Colloquial Tibetan By Sir Charles Alfred Bell
The People of Tibet By Sir Charles Alfred Bell
The Religion of Tibet By Charles Bell, Sir Charles Alfred Bell
The Colloquial Language of Tibet; or, The Occurrences of Daily Life, indoors and out, described according to the Lhasa idiom in a series of exercises, including grammatical and other notes Unknown Binding – 1897 by C. H. Polhill Turner (Author)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Occurrences-described-according-grammatical/dp/B0018EZ110
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=no%3A66231978
http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/6344/1/Usher15PhD.pdf
Jaschke english tibetan dictionary with special reference towards the prevailing dialects.
https://archive.org/details/tibetanenglishdi00jsuoft
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects, to which is Added an English-Tibetan Vocabulary By H. A. Jäschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects, to which is Added an English-Tibetan Vocabulary By H. A. Jäschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects, to which is Added an English-Tibetan Vocabulary By Heinrich August Jäschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary By H. A. Jaschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary By H. A. Jaschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary : 'Compact Edition By Heinrich August Jäschke
Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary By H. A. Jäschke
Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary, Volume 2 By Heinrich August Jäschke
Handwörterbuch der tibetischen Sprache By Heinrich August Jäschke
Handwörterbuch der Tibetischen Sprache, Part 1 By H. A. Jäschke
Jaschke Tibetan Grammar
https://archive.org/details/tibetangrammar00wenzgoog
https://archive.org/details/tibetangrammar00goog
https://archive.org/details/cu31924026914188
https://archive.org/details/TibetanGrammarByH.A.Jschke
Tibetan Grammar By Heinrich August Jäschke
A Short Practical Grammar of the Tibetan Language, with Special Reference to the Spoken Dialects By H. A. Jäschke
English Tibetan dictionary
https://archive.org/details/englishtibetandi00zlabuoft
https://archive.org/details/englishtibetandi00zlabrich
Sarat Chandra Das Tibetan Grammar
https://archive.org/details/grammaroftibetan00dass
Das Tibetan English dictionary
https://archive.org/details/tibetanenglishdi00dassuoft
A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms, Volume 1 By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary, with Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
Avadānakalpalatā: a collection of legendary stories about the Bodhisattvas By Kṣemendra, Sarat Chandra Das, Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana, Harimohana Vidyābhūṣaṇa
Indian Pandits in the Land of Snow By Sarat Chandra Das
Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet By Sarat Chandra Das
A Grammar of the Tibetan Language: Literary and Colloquial By Herbert Bruce Hannah
A grammar of the Tibetan language, literary and colloquial. With copious illustrations, and treating fully of spelling, pronunication, and the construction of the verb, and including appendices of the various forms of the verb (1912)
https://archive.org/details/grammaroftibetan00hannrich
http://ebook.lib.hku.hk/CADAL/B31400516/
Tibetan texts
https://archive.org/details/minortibetantext01maneuoft
Tibetan Buddhism
https://archive.org/details/illustrationsofl00hodg
https://archive.org/details/illustrationsofl00hodg_0
Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia
https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesbu00kuthgoog
Tibetan Bible
https://archive.org/details/genesisexodusfir00schr
Grammatik der tibetischen Sprache
https://archive.org/details/grammatikdertib00sssrgoog
This is written in Balti Tibetan language in Perso-Arabic script.
St. Matthew (in Balti) (1908)
https://archive.org/details/stmatthewinbalti00brit
Western Tibet: a practical dictionary of the language and customs of the districts included in the Ladák Wazarat By H. Ramsay
Ladakhi English English Ladakhi: dictionary
http://books.google.com/books?id=Rj0aAQAAIAAJ
Ladakhi Songs (1899)
https://archive.org/details/LadakhiSongs
Ladakhi Grammar
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_detail-1
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_phon-1
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_vertxt-1
Ladak, physical, statistical, and historical ; with notices of the surrounding countries (1854)
https://archive.org/details/ladakphysicalsta00cunnrich
Travels in Ladâk, Tartary, and Kashmir (1862)
https://archive.org/details/travelsinladkt00torr
https://archive.org/details/travelsinladktar00torr
A trip to Cashmere and Ladâk (1877)
https://archive.org/details/triptocashmerela00lambrich
Sandberg colloquial central Tibetan handbook
https://archive.org/details/handbookcolloqu00sandgoog https://archive.org/stream/handbookcolloqu00sandgoog/handbookcolloqu00sandgoog_djvu.txt
http://books.google.com/books/about/Handbook_of_Colloquial_Tibetan.html?id=ZCMOAAAAYAAJ
Hand-book of colloquial Tibetan: A practical guide to the language of Central Tibet ... By Graham Sandberg
Manual of the Sikkim Bhutia Language Or Dénjong Ké By Graham Sandberg
Manual of the Sikkim-Bhutia language, or, Dé-jong Ké (1888)
https://archive.org/details/manualofsikkimbh00sanduoft
The Exploration of Tibet: Its History and Particulars from 1623 to 1904 By Graham Sandberg
An Itinerary of the Route from Sikkim to Lhasa: Together with a Plan of the Capital of Tibet and a New Map of the Route from Yamdok Lake to Lhasa By Graham Sandberg
Tibet and the Tibetans By Graham Sandberg
Tibet and the Tibetans (1906)
https://archive.org/details/cu31924023224680
A dictionary of the Bhotanta or Boutan language, printed from a manuscript copy made by the late Rev. Frederic Christian Gotthelf Schroeter, edited by J. Marshman: To which is prefixed a grammar of the Bhotanta language By Friedrich Christian G. Schroeter, John Clark Marshman
A dictionary of the Bhotanta, or Boutan language By Frederic Christian Gotthelf Schrœter
A Dictionary of the Bhotanta, Or Boutan Language By Friedrich Christian Gotthelf Schroeter, William Carey
A Grammar of the Bhotanta, Or, Boutan Language By Friedrich Christian Gotthelf Schroeter
A DICTIONARY OF THE BHOTANTA LANGUAGE (1826)
https://archive.org/details/adictionarybhot00schogoog
A Grammar of the Bhotanta, Or, Boutan Language By Friedrich Christian Gotthelf Schroeter
Physical Geography of Western Tibet By H. Strachey
Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia: 1603-1721 By Cornelius Wessels
To Lhasa in Disguise: A Secret Expedition Through Mysterious Tibet By William Montgomery McGovern
Lands of the Thunderbolt: Sikhim, Chumbi & Bhutan By Lawrence John Lumley Dundas Marquis of Zetland
Folk-lore and Customs of the Lap-chas of Sikhim By C. De Beauvoir Stocks
Balti-English / English-Balti Dictionary By R. K. Sprigg
Balti-English English-Balti Dictionary By Richard Keith Sprigg
This is written in Balti Tibetan language in Perso-Arabic script.
St. Matthew (in Balti) (1908)
https://archive.org/details/stmatthewinbalti00brit
http://www.lexilogos.com/english/tibetan_dictionary.htm
Rajmaan ( talk) 10:53, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Hanlin_Academy#Foreign_language_vocabularies
http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/html/ho05/ho05_02389/index.html
http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ho05/ho05_02389/ho05_02389.pdf
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110000056895
http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2433/72922
http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/72922/1/KJ00000077685.pdf
http://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/11094/19215?locale=ja
http://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/11094/19215/1/sial02-157.pdf
http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/72922/1/KJ00000077685.pdf
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/138569/filename/La_chute_du_s.pdf
http://www.nacos.com/shokado/Site01/mokuroku091203.pdf
西番譯語
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/mulu/fb645.html
Rajmaan ( talk) 20:55, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
At Central Tibetan language there is a hatnote saying "not to be confused with Central Tibetic languages", which then redirects to the Classification section here. Yet, the Classification section only mentions Central Tibetan. It does mention that some authors break up Central Tibetan. What is the difference and how does it relate to that break up by some authors? -- JorisvS ( talk) 11:31, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
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Do we want to split off a Standard Tibetan article for the grammar, and leave the dialects / languages behind here? kwami ( talk) 16:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea to me. Tibetologist ( talk) 17:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I've added the Unreferenced template - as there was only a single reference in the whole article-and that reference was a broken link to another website.
A lot of things concerning Tibetan languages are hotly debated amongst linguists - and I think the article also needs to reflect these differing views. Chris Fynn ( talk) 07:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure about how the terminology is commonly used for classification, but I would think that "Tsang dialects" would not normally be classed under "Ü", since Tsang is commonly opposed to various Lhasa/standard/capital categories (Tsang is the region around Shigatse while Ü is the region around Lhasa). Should we simply replace "Ü" with "Ü-Tsang"?— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Shouldn't we have an article on the written norm of Tibetan, and make it the default redirection for Tibetan language? It's the base of Standard Tibetan in the diaspora and almost all written expressions, in Tibet or otherwise. (The Bhutan chos-skad is the same language, I guess?) 84.103.16.6 ( talk) 23:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
This discussion continues from ones that started on Talk:Khams_Tibetan_language and Talk:Amdo Tibetan language. The other day I asked here for us to continue it in the former place in accordance with Wikipedia policy to keep to the page where it started so as to avoid duplications over talk pages. Kwami has requested the discussion be moved here, as this page is more central and I've agreed that makes sense. This actually rolls a number of discussions into one, and in a nutshell, this is the way I see it.
At the beginning of the introduction of Melvyn Goldstein's Modern Literary Tibetan, 2nd edn 1977, (p. xvi), Goldstein makes it clear that he sees "the Tibetan language" as one thing. He refers to it twice:
Recent political events in Tibet have triggered a veritable revolution in the Tibetan language. A new genre of modern written Tibetan has emerged which includes the printed materials emanating from China, Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim and India, and which differs from classical Tibetan to a degree that makes it unintelligible even to scholars who are competent in the classical genre.
The confrontation of the Tibetan language with both modern politics (particularly communist) and modern technology resulted in the borrowing and creation of thousands upon thousands of new vocabulary items as well as certain characteristic stylistic and grammatical modes of expression. A new written style arose.
There is not more than one Tibetan language.
Nicolas Tournadre in his Manual of Standard Tibetan, Snow Lion 2003: 25 has this in the Introduction:
1. The Tibetan language
Tibetan belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages. This group encomasses about two hundred and fifty languages, spoken mainly in the Himalayas, on the Tibetan plateau and in the vicinity of the Mekong and the Salween .Within this linguistic family there are only two ancient literary languages: Burmese (12th century) and Tibetan (7th century). While very different, the common parentage of these two languages means that they share certain characteristics of phonology, syntax and vocabulary...
With the exception of Burmese, Tibetan, both in terms of syntax and vocabulary is entirely different from the other major languages of the region: Chinese, Hindi, Nepali, the Turkish languages (Uigur, Kazakh, Tatar, etc) and Mongolian.
Tibetan in its various dialects is spoken over an area the size of Western Europe, stretching from Baltistan (Pakistan) in the west, to Sichuan (China) in the east. To the north, the linguistic range of Tibetan extends beyond Lake Kokonor (in the province of Qinghai, China). Its southern limits are the southern slopes of the Himalaya, encompassing the independent state of Bhutan, Sikkim (India), the high valleys of Mustang and Dölpo, and Solukhumbu (Nepal), the region of Everest inhabited by the Sherpas of Nepal.
So the varieties of a single Tibetan language in Amdo, Kham, etc are not really languages themselves but rather, dialects. So, then, Central Tibetan is another dialect and standard Tibetan, which Tournadre (same page) treats as deriving from it is another dialect too. This is not surprising, since they share written Tibetan and are mutually intelligible through it, just as the dialects of English share those of written English.
All this affects a few of our articles. Instead of "Tibetan languages", this article needs to be renamed to "Tibetan language" and the content cleaned up accordingly. The articles on the dialects need to be renamed where they have the word "language" in their names and cleaned up. Tibetan language, which currently redirects to standard Tibetan needs to stop redirecting there, as "Tibetan language" will already have become the name of what was previously "Tibetan languages".
Can we start by please looking for *any* reliable source that claims Tibetan is not just one language plus a number of dialects. What do people think?
Tibetologist has already replied to previous strands of this discussion on 14 March with:
The Tibetan language family is as varied as the Romance family. Linguistic works on Tibetan languages refer to them as such. This article does not need to be changed.
I would like to ask for elaboration on these sources. Kwami on 15 March had a suggestion for which sources to follow:
Follow the ISO link in the info box, for one.
I cannot understand this comment but am keen to learn more.
Moonsell ( talk) 10:58, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
P.S. Another article needing cleanup is http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Research_on_Tibetan_Languages:_A_Bibliography. Moonsell ( talk) 11:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
In general the various varieties of Tibetan are often referred to as 'dialects'. Unsurprizingly, Sherpa, Ladakhi, Balti, and Dzongkha (i.e. the varieties of Tibetan spoken outside the PRC) are usually referred to as different languages. It would be inappropriate to follow this method in Wikipedia because it is intellectually incoherent. Either Balti and Dzongka are Tibetan dialects or Amdo is a Tibetan language. I would be happy with either solution, but prefer referring to all of the subbranches of the TIbetan family as 'languages'. Tournadre has made the comparison with Romance explicitly. Tibetan languages are as different as French and Spanish. cf. page 17 of [1] or even better the first page of this one
Based on my 20 years of field work throughout the Tibetan language area and on the
existing literature, I estimate that there are 220 ‘Tibetan dialects’ derived from Old Tibetan and nowadays spread across 5 countries: China, India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan. As I discuss in Tournadre (in progress), these dialects may be classed within 25 dialect groups, i. e. groups which do not allow mutual intelligibility. The notion of ‘dialect group’ is equivalent to the notion of language but does not entail any standardization. Thus if we set aside the notion of standardization, I believe it would be more appropriate to speak of 25 languages derived from Old Tibetan. This is not only a terminological issue but it gives an entirely different perception
of the range of variation. When we refer to 25 languages, we make clear that we are dealing with a family comparable in size to the Romance family which has 19 groups of dialects.
Please also take note of the title of Zeisler's book Relative tense and aspectual values in Tibetan languages: a comparative study. It is clear that experts in the field refer to these langauges as separate languages, not as dialects. Tibetologist ( talk) 09:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I added mention of the language of West Tibet (tö ke, stod-skad) to the pages on Amdo and Khams languages. Tibetans commonly speak of this as the fourth form of Tibetan. It is my understanding that they do not call it "Ladakhi" or think of it as the same language as Ladakhi. People have changed the red links to "west Tibetan" to point to Ladakhi language. Is there something I need to learn here about the relation between the west Tibetan and Ladakhi languages? Moonsell ( talk) 01:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Fortunately for us, the Tournadre article that Tibetologist mentions above is available on Tournadre's website: " Arguments against the Concept of ‘Conjunct’/‘Disjunct’ in Tibetan". Here is his summary of the 25 Tibetan dialect groups or Tibetic languages (in a footnote, he points out that another researcher has used "Tibetic" to refer to a group consisting of the languages/dialects descended from Old Tibetan + Kanauri + Tamangic, and Ethnologue has picked up this usage, but he, Tournadre, prefers to use "Tibetic" to refer specifically the languages/dialects descended from Old Tibetan). He describes the first 12 as major and the others as minor dialect groups, the latter often including only one dialect with a few thousand speakers or fewer.
Major dialect groups:
We should probably incorporate this information into the article, if it's the most authoritative available classification.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 04:13, 26 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?) 23:33, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Moved to Tibetic languages Mike Cline ( talk) 19:35, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
Tibetan languages →
Tibetic languages – Per Tournadre's classification. I think the current title can be confusing since it's really about a language family but readers will expect "Tibetan language" to be a specific language (either the standard spoken or the written form).
Tibetan language is also a redirect to this article. I would suggest that that article should be a disambiguation linking to
Tibetic languages,
Classical Tibetan,
Standard Tibetan, and Kham and Amdo for good measure.
Greg Pandatshang (
talk)
02:16, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I have started a discussion at Talk:Standard Tibetan.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 22:54, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't think text about Tshangla should be included. When this article was moved to Tibetic languages at my suggestion, my idea was to use the term specifically in Nicolas Tournadre's sense: by definition, Tibetic languages are those descended from Old Tibetan, what might informally be called "dialects of Tibetan". Tshangla seems to be a close cousin of these languages. I would suggest moving the text in question to Bodish languages.— Greg Pandatshang ( talk) 18:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
These are a list of works written by various Tibetologists from from 19th and early 20th centuries, on various Tibetic languages and Classical Tibetan. Includes grammars, dictionaries, etc.
Tibetan Manual By Vincent C. Henderson, rev. Edward Amundsen
Primer of Standard Tibetan By Edward Amundsen
A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, in English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
A grammar of the Tibetan language, in English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
Grammar of the Tibetan Language By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, József Terjék
Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English (1834)
https://archive.org/details/essaytowardsadi00tshgoog
https://archive.org/details/essaytowardsadi01tshgoog
Essay towards a dictionary, Tibetan and English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Saṅs-rgyas-phun-tshogs
Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English: Prepared, with the Assistance of Bandé Sangs-rgyas Phun-tshogs, a Learned Láma of Zangskár By Sandor Csoma De Koros, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös
Körösi Csoma Sandor dolgozatai By Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Tivadar Duka
Bell's colloquial Tibetan English dictionaries and grammars
https://archive.org/details/englishtibetanco00bellrich https://archive.org/stream/englishtibetanco00bellrich/englishtibetanco00bellrich_djvu.txt
https://archive.org/details/grammarofcolloqu00bellrich
Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan By C. A. Bell
Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan By Sir Charles Alfred Bell
Manual of Colloquial Tibetan By Sir Charles Alfred Bell
The People of Tibet By Sir Charles Alfred Bell
The Religion of Tibet By Charles Bell, Sir Charles Alfred Bell
The Colloquial Language of Tibet; or, The Occurrences of Daily Life, indoors and out, described according to the Lhasa idiom in a series of exercises, including grammatical and other notes Unknown Binding – 1897 by C. H. Polhill Turner (Author)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Occurrences-described-according-grammatical/dp/B0018EZ110
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=no%3A66231978
http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/6344/1/Usher15PhD.pdf
Jaschke english tibetan dictionary with special reference towards the prevailing dialects.
https://archive.org/details/tibetanenglishdi00jsuoft
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects, to which is Added an English-Tibetan Vocabulary By H. A. Jäschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects, to which is Added an English-Tibetan Vocabulary By H. A. Jäschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Special Reference to the Prevailing Dialects, to which is Added an English-Tibetan Vocabulary By Heinrich August Jäschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary By H. A. Jaschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary By H. A. Jaschke
A Tibetan-English Dictionary : 'Compact Edition By Heinrich August Jäschke
Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary By H. A. Jäschke
Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary, Volume 2 By Heinrich August Jäschke
Handwörterbuch der tibetischen Sprache By Heinrich August Jäschke
Handwörterbuch der Tibetischen Sprache, Part 1 By H. A. Jäschke
Jaschke Tibetan Grammar
https://archive.org/details/tibetangrammar00wenzgoog
https://archive.org/details/tibetangrammar00goog
https://archive.org/details/cu31924026914188
https://archive.org/details/TibetanGrammarByH.A.Jschke
Tibetan Grammar By Heinrich August Jäschke
A Short Practical Grammar of the Tibetan Language, with Special Reference to the Spoken Dialects By H. A. Jäschke
English Tibetan dictionary
https://archive.org/details/englishtibetandi00zlabuoft
https://archive.org/details/englishtibetandi00zlabrich
Sarat Chandra Das Tibetan Grammar
https://archive.org/details/grammaroftibetan00dass
Das Tibetan English dictionary
https://archive.org/details/tibetanenglishdi00dassuoft
A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms, Volume 1 By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary: With Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary, with Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms By Sarat Chandra Das
Avadānakalpalatā: a collection of legendary stories about the Bodhisattvas By Kṣemendra, Sarat Chandra Das, Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana, Harimohana Vidyābhūṣaṇa
Indian Pandits in the Land of Snow By Sarat Chandra Das
Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet By Sarat Chandra Das
A Grammar of the Tibetan Language: Literary and Colloquial By Herbert Bruce Hannah
A grammar of the Tibetan language, literary and colloquial. With copious illustrations, and treating fully of spelling, pronunication, and the construction of the verb, and including appendices of the various forms of the verb (1912)
https://archive.org/details/grammaroftibetan00hannrich
http://ebook.lib.hku.hk/CADAL/B31400516/
Tibetan texts
https://archive.org/details/minortibetantext01maneuoft
Tibetan Buddhism
https://archive.org/details/illustrationsofl00hodg
https://archive.org/details/illustrationsofl00hodg_0
Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia
https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesbu00kuthgoog
Tibetan Bible
https://archive.org/details/genesisexodusfir00schr
Grammatik der tibetischen Sprache
https://archive.org/details/grammatikdertib00sssrgoog
This is written in Balti Tibetan language in Perso-Arabic script.
St. Matthew (in Balti) (1908)
https://archive.org/details/stmatthewinbalti00brit
Western Tibet: a practical dictionary of the language and customs of the districts included in the Ladák Wazarat By H. Ramsay
Ladakhi English English Ladakhi: dictionary
http://books.google.com/books?id=Rj0aAQAAIAAJ
Ladakhi Songs (1899)
https://archive.org/details/LadakhiSongs
Ladakhi Grammar
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_detail-1
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_phon-1
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_lbj_vertxt-1
Ladak, physical, statistical, and historical ; with notices of the surrounding countries (1854)
https://archive.org/details/ladakphysicalsta00cunnrich
Travels in Ladâk, Tartary, and Kashmir (1862)
https://archive.org/details/travelsinladkt00torr
https://archive.org/details/travelsinladktar00torr
A trip to Cashmere and Ladâk (1877)
https://archive.org/details/triptocashmerela00lambrich
Sandberg colloquial central Tibetan handbook
https://archive.org/details/handbookcolloqu00sandgoog https://archive.org/stream/handbookcolloqu00sandgoog/handbookcolloqu00sandgoog_djvu.txt
http://books.google.com/books/about/Handbook_of_Colloquial_Tibetan.html?id=ZCMOAAAAYAAJ
Hand-book of colloquial Tibetan: A practical guide to the language of Central Tibet ... By Graham Sandberg
Manual of the Sikkim Bhutia Language Or Dénjong Ké By Graham Sandberg
Manual of the Sikkim-Bhutia language, or, Dé-jong Ké (1888)
https://archive.org/details/manualofsikkimbh00sanduoft
The Exploration of Tibet: Its History and Particulars from 1623 to 1904 By Graham Sandberg
An Itinerary of the Route from Sikkim to Lhasa: Together with a Plan of the Capital of Tibet and a New Map of the Route from Yamdok Lake to Lhasa By Graham Sandberg
Tibet and the Tibetans By Graham Sandberg
Tibet and the Tibetans (1906)
https://archive.org/details/cu31924023224680
A dictionary of the Bhotanta or Boutan language, printed from a manuscript copy made by the late Rev. Frederic Christian Gotthelf Schroeter, edited by J. Marshman: To which is prefixed a grammar of the Bhotanta language By Friedrich Christian G. Schroeter, John Clark Marshman
A dictionary of the Bhotanta, or Boutan language By Frederic Christian Gotthelf Schrœter
A Dictionary of the Bhotanta, Or Boutan Language By Friedrich Christian Gotthelf Schroeter, William Carey
A Grammar of the Bhotanta, Or, Boutan Language By Friedrich Christian Gotthelf Schroeter
A DICTIONARY OF THE BHOTANTA LANGUAGE (1826)
https://archive.org/details/adictionarybhot00schogoog
A Grammar of the Bhotanta, Or, Boutan Language By Friedrich Christian Gotthelf Schroeter
Physical Geography of Western Tibet By H. Strachey
Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia: 1603-1721 By Cornelius Wessels
To Lhasa in Disguise: A Secret Expedition Through Mysterious Tibet By William Montgomery McGovern
Lands of the Thunderbolt: Sikhim, Chumbi & Bhutan By Lawrence John Lumley Dundas Marquis of Zetland
Folk-lore and Customs of the Lap-chas of Sikhim By C. De Beauvoir Stocks
Balti-English / English-Balti Dictionary By R. K. Sprigg
Balti-English English-Balti Dictionary By Richard Keith Sprigg
This is written in Balti Tibetan language in Perso-Arabic script.
St. Matthew (in Balti) (1908)
https://archive.org/details/stmatthewinbalti00brit
http://www.lexilogos.com/english/tibetan_dictionary.htm
Rajmaan ( talk) 10:53, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Hanlin_Academy#Foreign_language_vocabularies
http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/html/ho05/ho05_02389/index.html
http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ho05/ho05_02389/ho05_02389.pdf
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110000056895
http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2433/72922
http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/72922/1/KJ00000077685.pdf
http://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/11094/19215?locale=ja
http://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/11094/19215/1/sial02-157.pdf
http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/72922/1/KJ00000077685.pdf
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/138569/filename/La_chute_du_s.pdf
http://www.nacos.com/shokado/Site01/mokuroku091203.pdf
西番譯語
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/mulu/fb645.html
Rajmaan ( talk) 20:55, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
At Central Tibetan language there is a hatnote saying "not to be confused with Central Tibetic languages", which then redirects to the Classification section here. Yet, the Classification section only mentions Central Tibetan. It does mention that some authors break up Central Tibetan. What is the difference and how does it relate to that break up by some authors? -- JorisvS ( talk) 11:31, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
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