Tibetanབོད་སྐད་/Dzongkhaརྫོང་ཁ

[księżycowy]

Tibetan and/or Dzongkha anyone? Well this is the place to discuss and (possibly) learn these two languages! Though I do not claim to be fluent in either, just a learner myself.

Unfortunately I haven't the knowledge or time to start any lessons now, but I will try to start some in the future, if someone else does not beat me to it.

In the mean time, here is a link to a short Tibetan grammar and phrasebook: http://www.geocities.com/tibetanlanguage/language.html
and a link to a good learning site: http://www.learntibetan.net/
as well as another site with links and resources: http://www.thdl.org

[Starlin]

Hello! I have to learn Tibetan as my second Asian language at my university. It's more Classical Tibetan, though, because almost everything we learn from is Buddhist texts... I'm now in China for my year abroad and have to learn Tibetan on my own, which is quite impossible, I should say, complex as it is Thanks for those links!

[Trapy]

I'm up for learning some, but more links would be useful

[księżycowy]

I'm up for learning some, but more links would be useful

I'd love to give you guys some more links, unfortunately there are few links, and even fewer great links for these two languages.

I'm personally using the books 'Manual of Standard Tibetan' (aquired here) and 'Dzongkha' (aquired here)

These books are a little pricy, and some of you might not want to learn enough to bother getting a book so I will still try to find links. In fact at THDL they have some of the 'Manual of Standard Tibetan' posted, but not all of it.
Later!

[Trapy]

$50.40

ouch! Yes, financially that's slightly out of my reach considoring how much effort i would put into it.

We should randomly add some words into our posts in other forums to encourage these languagea's spread

thoo jaychay!

[księżycowy]

ouch! Yes, financially that's slightly out of my reach considoring how much effort i would put into it.

Yeah, that's why I'll try to find some other links. The prices are quite high for both books. I remember this one site I used to have that was quite good, I'll try to find it.

[księżycowy]

Another link here, simple though it might be.

[Trapy]

Another link here, simple though it might be.

That's good. It's like a website without all the junk cluttering it

[zhiguli]

heard tibetan for the first time at the omniglot blog:

http://www.omniglot.com/soundfiles/blog/clip.mp3

wow...it's *gorgeous*.

[Nero]

Tibetan was one of my old favorite languages. It sounds a lot like chinese at times

[księżycowy]

Tibetan was one of my old favorite languages. It sounds a lot like chinese at times

Which is not really supprising considering they are in the same language family. (Though they are somewhat distant relatives)

[zhiguli]

was looking around on youtube and found a few tibetan videos with same-language subtitles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wOKgNaL1Z0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbcE7dnc7wU

[imploder]

Hi! I am new on this forum. I've seen somewhere that posts with translation requests should have some special mark but I don't know how to do it.

I watched the film Himalaya, which is only in Tibetan and I remember there was something sung several times. IIRC it was [o: mani peme nu:] or something like that. Does anyone know what it means?

[Karavinka]

Hi! I am new on this forum. I've seen somewhere that posts with translation requests should have some special mark but I don't know how to do it.

I watched the film Himalaya, which is only in Tibetan and I remember there was something sung several times. IIRC it was [o: mani peme nu:] or something like that. Does anyone know what it means?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_mani_padme_hum

Tibetan: ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་ Om Ma Ni Pe Me Hung [or Hum]

[minus273]

A difficult language, though...
The spelling seems to take a whole semester to learn.

[Nero]

Here's the original Tibetan thread, for reference:

[Formiko]

Well, I learned quite alot in a 4 week speaad course before I went to Lhasa. I learned more after I was thrown in Tibet I didn't learn how to read it though..

[Laoshu505000]

བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། (Hello)
(Tashi Delek literal translation sounds like this ( BKR'SHIS'LEGS'')

Hello everyone, today I thought maybe it would good to talk a little bit about the Tibetan alphabet. I'm not sure how many of you are interested in this language, but I tell you, it is beautiful and fun to learn. I have a few places where you could practice Tibetan however; the drawback of it is....in those chat rooms, you can't type in the actual language. Well, I will begin with the letters first then talk about the spelling rules.

ཀ་ཁ་ག་ང་ ka' kha' ga' nga'
ཅ་ཆ་ཇ་ཉ་ ch' chha' ja' nya'
ཏ་ཐ་ད་ན་ ta' tha' da' na'
པ་ཕ་བ་མ་ pa' pha' ba' ma'
ཙ་ཚ་ཛ་ཝ་ tsa' tsha' dza' wa'
ཞ་ཟ་འ་ཡ་ zha' za' a' ya'
ར་ལ་ཤ་ས་ ra 'la' sha' sa'
ཧ་ཨ་ ha' a'
So here you have the 30 consonants. The dots pretty much keep the letters seperated. And if you haven't notced, all of the letters in the second row are aspirated ''breathy''
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are four vowels in Tibetan, I will write them below:
ཨི་་ཨུ་་ཨེ་་ཨོ ''i'' as in ''me'' / ''u'' as in ''ooh''/ ''e'' as in ''eh''/ ''o'' as in ''oh''
I'm sorry about the size. I tried making the font bigger, but I had trouble trying to do that. Anyway, I couldn't type the vowels here by themselves so I had to use the letter 'a'' which is silent to write the sounds. Anyway, I will be making a video about these letters so if you can't see them clearly, you will in the video. So these are the 4 vowels in Tibetan. Just for your information, each of the vowels has its own name. I will write them for you.
གི་གུ ------ GI-GU
ཞབས་ཀྱུ་---- SHAB-KYU Note* ''ཞ'' Although this letter is ''zh'' as in ''j'' it has a low sound ''sha''
འགྲེང་བུ----- DRENG-BU
ན་རོ་------- NA-RO
One unique characteristic of Tibetan is the change of pronunciation in the letter. As you can see above, the name ''DRENG-BU'' doesn't match up with the actual letters. Don't worry about it. Later on you will see why they are spelled that way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I would like to talk about Subscripts and Superscripts. Subscripts are letters that are usually written below letters. There are 4 subscripts. I will list them here:
ཡ་ / ཡ་བཏགས་ ( YA-TA)
ར་ /ར་བཏགས་ (RA-TA)
ལ་ /ལ་བཏགས་ ( LA-TA)
ཝ་ / ཝ་ཟུར་ (WA-ZUR)
These are the 4 subscripts and I've written the names in parenthesis. I will give you some examples of how letters would look when they are connects with these scripts.When the letter '(ཡ)' is connected to a letter, it would look something like this:་ཀྱ་ཁྱ་གྱ་པྱ་ཕྱ་བྱ་མྱ་ Just to let you know, there are only 7 letters that could be connected with this 'YA-TA'' The letters I've written above are the only letters that are written with ''YA-TA'' One weird thing I should tell you though, is this ''YA-TA'' changes the pronunciation of པ་ཕ་བ་མ་ completely. Instead of being '' pya-phya-bya-mya'' They are pronounced like this: CHA/ CHHA/JA/ NYA/. I thought that was weird when I first started learning, but hey, it's a foreign language right When a Tibetan or anyone who knows Tibetan asks you to spell out these letters that are connected with this ''YA-TA'' this is how you would do that: KA YA-TA (KYA), KHA YA-TA (KHYA), GA YA-TA (GYA), PA YA-TA (CHA), PHA YA-TA (CHHA), BA YA-TA (JA), MA YA-TA (NYA). So here you have it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now lets move on to the next Subscript (ར) This letter is subscribed to 14 letters. I will show you what it looks like when it's combined. Here are the 14 letters that are combined with this letter:
ཀྲ་ཁྲ་གྲ་
ཏྲ་ཐྲ་དྲ་ནྲ་
པྲ་ཕྲ་བྲ་མྲ་
ཤྲ་སྲ་ཧྲ་
Note* This Subscript changes the pronunciation to 10 of these letters out of 14. And when you pronounce the letter, the R is a bit subtle. I will show you the spellings here:
ཀྲ KA RA-TA (TRA)
ཁྲ KHA RA-TA (THRA)
གྲ GA RA-TA (DRA)
ཏྲ NA RA-TA (NA)
མྲ MA RA-TA (MA)
ཤྲ SHA RA-TA( SHA)
སྲ SA RA-TA(SA)
ཧྲ HA RA-TA (HRA)

ཀྲ་ཁྲ་གྲ་ཏྲ་ཐྲ་དྲ་ནྲ་པྲ་ཕྲ་བྲ་མྲ་ཤྲ་སྲ་ཧྲ་ TRA, THRA, DRA, TRA, THRA, DRA, NA, TRA, THRA, DRA, MA, SHA, SA, HRA.These are the 14 letters ''RA-TA'' is connected with.You can also see that 9 of these letters sound alike when connected with RA-TA. The only one that sounds different is HA RA-TA HRA. Now as far as the ones that don't change, they keep their same sound although connected with RA-TA. These 4 letters are: ནྲ་མྲ་ཤྲ་སྲ་ NA , MA, SHA, SA. As you can see, there isn't a change in pronunciation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now this next one is pretty easy- (ལ). This letter can be subscribed to 6 letters. The good thing about this letter is, it doesn't really change the pronunciation of the letter. There's only one that changes ''་ཟླ'' ZA LA-TA (DA). Everything else would just sound like ''LA'' with no change. Here I will list them for you:
ཀླ་གླ་བླ་ཟླ་རླ་སླ་
So just remember that only one will change and that's ZA LA-TA (DA)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now this next one (ཝ) WA-ZUR is connected to 16 letters. It doesn't change the pronunciation at all. Example: ་ཀྭ་ཁྭ ka WA-ZUR (KA), KHA WA-ZUR (KHA). Another thing you will rarely see WA-ZUR used, so it's nothing to worry about. So that's it for the Subscripts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are 3 superscripts in Tibetan. ར་ལ་ས (RA-GO/LA-GO/SA-GO) ( ར་མགོ་ ལ་མགོ་ ས་མགོ་)
These Superscripts don't change the pronunciation of any letters accept one་ལྷ (LHA)
This is how these Superscripts would look connected with other letters:
རྐ་རྣ་རྨ་ RA-GO KA (KA)
ལྐ་ལྐྷ་ལྒ LA-GO KA (KA)
སྐ་སྐྷ་སྒ་ SA-GO KA (KA)
No pronunciation change at all
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, guys it seems that I have to go now. I wanted to also talk about the prefixes and Suffixes , but I don't have time right now so I will wait until next time. Hopefully, there's someone here who can tell me how to make the font size larger because it is very difficult to see the letters I've written. I will make a video about this as well sometime this week. Next time I will talk about the prefixes and suffixes. Take care now.
ག་ལེར་བཞུགས། (Good bye) For a Person leaving- Ka lee shuu Literal (G'LER'BZHUGS')
ག་ལེར་ཕེབས། (Good bye) For a person staying- ka lee pay Literal (G'LER'PHEBS)
ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཆེ། (Thank You) Tu jay chay Literal ( Thugs' rje'che')

[ILuvEire]

Wow. That's pretty cool. It kind of reminds me of Devangari.

[Laoshu505000]

Yea, there are definitely some similarities. I think Tibetan is a bit more technical though. Though I do think both systems are complicated due to spelling rules. Hey, you should try it. I know there aren't many Tibetan speakers in your area, but it would be pretty fun to learn some. Thanks for the post.