Tibetan script

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This article contains Indic text. Without rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes or other symbols instead of Indic characters; or irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts.

The Tibetan script is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the script is called uchen script (Tibetan: དབུ་ཅན་; Wylie: dbu-can; "with a head") while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umé script (Tibetan: དབུ་མེད་; Wylie: dbu-med; "headless"). Besides Tibet, the writing system is also used in Bhutan and in parts of India and Nepal.

The script is romanized in a variety of ways. This article employs the Wylie transliteration system.

[edit] History

Polychrome text left of center is the primary mantra of Tibetan Buddhism, Om Mani Padme Hum. Monochrome text right of center reads "Om Vajrasattva Hum", an invocation to the embodiment of primeval wisdom.

The creation of the Tibetan script is attributed to Thonmi Sambhota of the mid-7th century. The tradition holds that Thonmi Sambhota, a minister of Songtsen Gampo (569-649), was sent to India to study the art of writing, and upon his return introduced the Tibetan script. The form of the letters is based on an Indic alphabet of that period, but which specific Indic script inspired the Tibetan alphabet remains controversial.

There were three orthographic standardizations after the script's invention. The most important one, an official one aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures, took place during the early 9th century. The Tibetan orthography has not altered since then, while the spoken language keeps changing, for example, losing the complex consonant clusters. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, in particular the Lhasa dialect, the spelling, which reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan, differs from the reading significantly. This is why some people are in favour of transliterating Tibetan "as it is pronounced", for example, writing "Kagyu" instead of "Bka'-rgyud".

[edit] Description

The Tibetan script has 30 consonants. The vowels are a, i, u, e, o. As in other Indic scripts, each consonant letter includes an inherent a, and the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ ka, ཀི ki, ཀུ ku, ཀེ ke, ཀོ ko. Old Tibetan included a gigu 'verso' of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanwords, especially transcribed from the Sanskrit.

Syllables are separated by a tseg ་; since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space. Spaces are not used to divide words.

Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal, because the language had no tone at the time of the scripts invention, tones are not written. However, since tones developed from segmental features they can usually be correctly predicted by the spelling of Tibetan words.

The number plate of a car registered in Jammu and Kashmir, in Roman and Tibetan scripts.

The h or apostrophe (’) usually signifies aspiration, but in the case of zh and sh it signifies palatalization and the single letter h represents a voiceless glottal fricative.

Old Tibetan had no letter w, which was instead a digraph for 'w.

The Sanskrit "cerebral" (retroflex) consonants are represented by the letters ta, tha, da, na, and sha turned vertically to give ཊ ṭa (Ta), ཋ ṭha (Tha), ཌ ḍa (Da), ཎ ṇa (Na), and ཥ ṣa (Sa).

As in other Indic scripts, clustered consonants are often stacked vertically. Unfortunately, some fonts and applications do not support this behavior for Tibetan, so these examples may not display properly; you might have to download a font such as Tibetan Machine Uni.

W, r, and y change form when they are beneath another consonant; thus ཀྭ kwa; ཀྲ kra; ཀྱ kya. R also changes form when it is above most other consonants; thus རྐ rka. An exception is the cluster རྙ rnya.

[edit] Tibetan in Unicode

The Unicode Tibetan block is U+0F00 – U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts (you will need Unicode fonts covering this block installed to view the table properly in your web browser):

[edit] See also

• Tibetan Pinyin
• THDL Simplified Phonetic Transcription
• Balti script

[edit] References

• Stephan V. Beyer, The Classical Tibetan Language, reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1993.
• Alexander Csoma de Koros, A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1983.
• Sarat Chandra Das, An Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1915.
• Heinrich August Jaschke (corrected by Sunil Gupta), Tibetan Grammar, reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1989.

[edit] External links

• Description of the design of each letter.
• Tibetan Calligraphy - how to write the Tibetan script.
• Jomolhari Font - Unicode compatible. Download
• 2 fonts - not Unicode compatible.
• 2 fonts: 1 Macintosh, not Unicode compatible.
• Origins of tibetan calligraphy: History of tibetan script and guide to tibetan script.
• Omniglot's Guide to the Tibetan writing system
• Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library - articles on Unicode font issues; free cross-platform OpenType font - Unicode compatible.
• Elements of The Tibetan writing system.
• Introduction to Tibetan Orthography, at Kuro5hin