| Standard Tibetan | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| བོད་སྐད་ bod skad |
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| Spoken in | China, Nepal, India | |||
| Region | Tibet | |||
| Native speakers | 1.3 million (1990 census) ca. 5 million of broader Tibetan |
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| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
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| Writing system | Tibetan script | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Tibet Autonomous Region | |||
| Regulated by | Committee for the Standardisation of the Tibetan Language[1] | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | bo | |||
| ISO 639-2 | tib (B) bod (T) |
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| ISO 639-3 | bod | |||
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Standard Tibetan (Tibetan: བོད་སྐད།, Wylie: Bod skad, ZYPY: Pögä, IPA: [pʰø̀k˭ɛʔ]; also Tibetan: བོད་ཡིག།, Wylie: Bod yig, ZYPY: Pöyig) is the most widely used spoken form of the Tibetan languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect belonging to the Central Tibetan languages. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Central Tibetan (Tibetan: དབུས་སྐད་, Wylie: dbus skad [ýkɛʔ]; also written Ükä or Uke or Tibetan: དབུས་གཙང་སྐད་, Wylie: Dbus-gtsang skad [ýʔtsáŋ kɛʔ], also written Ü-tsang kä). Tibetan, often implicitly meaning Standard Tibetan, is an official[2] language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Central Tibetan is one of several branches of the Tibetan languages, the most salient others being Khams, Amdo, and Ladakhi. The standard form of written Tibetan is based on Classical Tibetan and is highly conservative.
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Like many languages, Standard Tibetan has a variety of language registers:
Unlike many other languages of East Asia, there are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting in Tibetan, although words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, and sometimes after a smaller number.
In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Vedic Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.
Tibetan is written with an Indic script, with a historically conservative orthography that reflects Old Tibetan phonology and helps unify the Tibetan-language area.
Wylie transliteration is the most common system of romanization used by Western scholars in rendering written Tibetan using the Latin alphabet (such as employed on much of this page).
The following summarizes the sound system of the dialect of Tibetan spoken in Lhasa, which is the most influential variety of the spoken language
Tournadre and Sangda Dorje describe eight vowels in the standard language:
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | rounded | |
| Close | [i] | [y] | [u] |
| Close-mid | [e] | [ø] | [o] |
| Open-mid | [ɛ] | ||
| Open | [a] | ||
Three additional vowels are sometimes described as significantly distinct: [ʌ] or [ə], which is normally an allophone of [a]; [ɔ], which is normally an allophone of [o]; and [ɛ̈] (an unrounded, centralised, mid front vowel), which is normally an allophone of [e]. These sounds normally occur in closed syllables; because Tibetan does not allow geminated consonants, there are cases where one syllable ends with the same sound as the one following it, with the result that the first is pronounced as an open syllable but retains the vowel typical of a closed syllable. For instance, zhabs (foot) is pronounced [ɕʌp] and pad (contraction of padma, lotus) is pronounced [pɛʔ], but the compound word, zhabs pad is pronounced [ɕʌpɛʔ]. This process can result in minimal pairs involving sounds that are otherwise allophones.
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.
Phonemic vowel length exists in Lhasa Tibetan, but appears in a restricted set of circumstances. Assimilation of Classical Tibetan's suffixed vowels—normally ‘i (འི་)—at the end of a word produces a long vowel in Lhasa Tibetan; this feature is sometimes omitted in phonetic transcriptions. In normal spoken pronunciation, a lengthening of the vowel is also frequently substituted for the sounds [r] and [l] when they occur at the end of a syllable.
The vowels [i], [y], [e], [ø], and [ɛ] each have nasalized forms: [ĩ], [ỹ], [ẽ], [ø̃], and [ɛ̃], respectively. Historically, this results from a syllable-final /n/, such as /in/, /en/, etc. In some unusual cases, the vowels [a], [u], and [o] may also be nasalised.
The Lhasa dialect is usually described as having two tones: high and low. However, in monosyllabic words, each tone can occur with two distinct contours. The high tone can be pronounced with either a flat or a falling contour, while the low tone can be pronounced with either a flat or rising-falling contour, the latter being a tone that rises to a medium level before falling again. It is normally safe to distinguish only between the two tones, because there are very few minimal pairs which differ only because of contour. The difference only occurs in certain words ending in the sounds [m] or [ŋ]; for instance, the word kham (Tibetan: ཁམ་, "piece") is pronounced [kʰám] with a high flat tone, while the word Khams (Tibetan: ཁམས་, "the Kham region") is pronounced [kʰâm] with a high falling tone.
In polysyllabic words, tone is only important in the first syllable.
| Labial | Alveolar | Alveolo-palatal | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||
| Plosive | aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | ʈʰ ~ ʈʂʰ | cʰ | kʰ | ||
| unaspirated | p | t | ʈ ~ ʈʂ | c | k | ʔ | ||
| Affricate | aspirated | tsʰ | tɕʰ | |||||
| unaspirated | ts | tɕ | ||||||
| Fricative | s | ɕ | ʂ | h | ||||
| Approximant | ɹ | j | w | |||||
| Lateral | voiceless | l̥ | ||||||
| voiced | l | |||||||
Notes:
In the 18th and 19th centuries several Western linguists arrived in Tibet:
Indian indologist and linguist Rahul Sankrityayan wrote a Tibetan grammar in Hindi. Some of his other works on Tibetan were:
In much of Tibet, primary education is conducted either primarily or entirely in the Tibetan language, and bilingual education is rarely introduced before students reach middle school. However, Chinese is the language of instruction of most Tibetan secondary schools. Students that continue on to tertiary education have the option of studying humanistic disciplines in Tibetan at a number of Minority colleges in China.[3] This contrasts with Tibetan schools in Dharamsala, India, where the Ministry of Human Resource Development curriculum requires academic subjects be taught in English beginning in middle school.[4] Literacy and enrollment rates continue to be the main concern of the Chinese government. A large proportion of the adult population in Tibet remains illiterate, and despite compulsory education policies, many parents in rural areas are unable to send their children to school.
In February 2008 Norman Baker UK MP, released a statement to mark International Mother Language Day claiming that "The Chinese government are following a deliberate policy of extinguishing all that is Tibetan, including their own language in their own country" and asserting a right for Tibetans to express themselves in "in their mother tongue".[5] But Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has noted that "within certain limits the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression" and "the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored."[6]
Some scholars also question claims like these, because most Tibetans continue to reside in rural areas where Chinese is rarely spoken, as opposed to Lhasa and other Tibetan cities where Chinese can often be heard. In the Texas Journal of International Law, Barry Sautman stated that "none of the many recent studies of endangered languages deems Tibetan to be imperiled, and language maintenance among Tibetans contrasts with language loss even in the remote areas of Western states renowned for liberal policies...claims that primary schools in Tibet teach putonghua are in error. Tibetan was the main language of instruction in 98% of TAR primary schools in 1996; today, putonghua is introduced in early grades only in urban schools...Because less than four out of ten TAR Tibetans reach secondary school, primary school matters most for their cultural formation."[7]
The most important Tibetan branch of language under threat is however the Ladakhi language of the Western Tibetan group, in the Ladakh region of India. In Leh, a slow but gradual process whereby the Tibetan vernacular is supplanted by English and Hindi and there are signs of a gradual loss of Tibetan cultural identity in the area. The similarly related Balti dialect is also in severe danger; and unlike Ladakhi has already been replaced by Urdu as the main language of Baltistan; particularly due to settlers speaking Urdu from other areas moving to that area.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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