Tibetan language

The Tibetan language is spoken by Tibetan people across a wide area of eastern Central Asia and the large number of Tibetan refugees all over the world. Its classical written form is a major regional literary language, particulary in its use as in Buddhist writings.

Tibetan is typically classified as a Tibeto-Burman language which in turn is, according to the most widespread theory, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Spoken Tibetan includes numerous regional varieties which, in many cases, are not mutually intelligible. Moreover, the boundaries between Tibetan and certain other Himalayan languages are sometimes unclear. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo, and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects, while other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered closely-related but separate languages. By this definition, Tibetan is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau as well as by approximately 150,000 exile speakers in India and other countries.

Although Classical Tibetan apparently was not a tonal language, some dialects have developed tones. This is particularly true in the Central and Kham dialects, while the Amdo dialect and some in the west remain without tones. Tibetan morphology can generally be described as agglutinative.

Dialects

Tibetan is comprised of several dialect groups:

Dialect group	Sub-group	Dialects
Central dialects approx. 1 million speakers	Ü ()	Lhasa, Painbo, Doilungdêqên, Maizhogungkar, Qüxü (Xoi), Lhagyari, Zêtang
	Tsang ()	Shigatse, Gyantse, Lhazê, Tingri, Sakya, Yadong (Chomo/Xarsingma)
		Mustang ()
Khams () approx. 1.5 million speakers	northern Khams	Garzê: Dêgê, Dardo, Nyagquka, Chaggo, Nyarong, Garzê, Dainkog Gyêgu: Nangqên
	southern Khams	Garzê: Litang, Batang, Daxod, Dêrong, Dabpa Dêqên and Chamdo: Markam, Calho
	Nomadic Khams	northern Chamdo: Dêngqên, Baqên Nagchu Gyêgu: Chindu, Qoima
Amdo () approx. 800,000 speakers	Rural Amdo	Labrang, Luqu, Ra’gyei, Ledu, Rêbgong, Tongde, Chiga
Amdo () approx. 800,000 speakers	Nomadic Amdo	Zêkog, Marqu, Xinghai, Qilian, Gangca, Haiyan (Chinkuxung), Jigzhi, Baima, Gadê Ngawa

The koiné spoken by Tibetan exiles is derivative largely of the Central Tibetan dialects.

Registers

P'al-skad (Phal-skad): the vernacular speech.
Rje-sa (She-sa) ("polite respectful speech"): the formal spoken style, particularly prominent in Lhasa.
Ch'os-skad (Chos-skad) ("religious language"): the literary style in which the scriptures and other classical works are written.

Syntax

Tibetan is an ergative language. Sentential grammatical units have SOV word order:
- the substantive > the adjective > the verb
- the object and the adverb > the verb
- the genitive > the noun on which it depends

Nouns

The classical written language has nine cases: the absolutive, (unmarked morphologically), the genitive (-gi, -gyi, -kyi, -'i, -yi), the ergative/instrumental (-gi, -gyi, -kyi, -'i, -yi), the locative (-na), allative (-la), terminative ( -ru, -su, -tu, -du, -r), comitative (-dang), the ablative (-nas), and the elative (-las). Case morphology is affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words.

Nominalizing suffixes — pa or ba and ma — are required by the noun (substantive or adjective) that is to be singled out;
po or bo (masculine) and mo (feminine) are used for distinction of gender or for emphasis.

The plural is denoted when required by adding the morpheme (-rnams), when the collective nature of the plurality is stressed the morpheme (-dag) is instead used. These two morphemes combine readily (i.e. rnams-dag 'a group with several members', and dag-rnams 'several groups'). When several words are connected in a sentence they seldom require more than one case element, and that comes last.

There are personal, demonstrative, interrogative and reflexive pronouns, as well as an indefinite article, which is plainly related to the numeral for "one."

Verbs

Verbs do not inflect for person or number. Morphologically there are up to four separate stem forms called by the Tibetan grammarians, influenced by Sanskrit grammatical terminology, present (lta-da), past ('das-pa), future (ma-'ongs-pa), and imperative (skul-tshigs), although the precise semantics of these stems is still controversial. It should be noted that the so-called future stem is not a true future, but conveys the sense of necessity or obligation. In view of this feature and the behaviour of the so-called present and past stems, it is possible that the Tibetan verbal system was originally aspectual, distinguishing completed and incompleted actions, rather than tense.

The majority of Tibetan verbs fall into one of two categories, those which express implicitly or explicitly the involvement of an agent, marked in a sentence by the instrumental particle (kyis etc) and those expressing an action which does not involve an agent. Tibetan grammarians refer to these categories as tha-dad-pa and tha-mi-dad-pa respectively. Although these two categories often seem to overlap with the English grammatical concepts of transitive and intransitive, most modern writers on Tibetan grammar have adopted the terms "voluntary" and "involuntary", based on native Tibetan descriptions. It should be noted that most involuntary verbs lack an imperative stem.

Many verbs exhibit stem ablaut among the four stem forms, thus a or e in the present tends to become o in the imperative byed, byas, bya, byos 'to do'), an e in the present changes to a in the past and future (len, blangs, blang, longs 'to take'); in some verbs a present in i changes to u in the other stems ('dzin, bzung, gzung, zung 'to take'). Additionally, the stems of verbs are also distinguished by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes,thus sgrub (present) bsgrubs (past), bsgrub (future) sgrubs (imperative). Though the final -s suffix, when used, is quite regular for the past and imperative, the apecific prefixes to be used with any given verb are less predictable, though there is a clear pattern of b- for a past stem and g- for a future stem, but this usage is not consistent.

Only a limited number of verbs are capable of four changes; some cannot assume more than three, some two, and many only one. This relative deficiency is made up by the addition of auxiliaries or suffixes both in the classical language and in the modern dialects.

Verbs are negated by two prepositional particles: mi and ma. Mi is used with present and future stems, while ma is used with the past and imperative stems. There is also a negative stative verb med 'there is not, there does not exist', the counterpart to the stative verb yod 'there is, there exists'

As with nouns, Tibetan also has a complex system of honorific and polite verbal forms, paralleling that found in Japanese. Thus, many verbs for everday actions have a completely different form to express the superior status, whether actual or out of courtesy, of the agent of the action, thus lta 'see', hon. gzigs; byed 'do', hon. mdzad. Where a specific honorific verb stem does not exist, the same effect in brought about by compounding a standard verbal stem with an appropriate general honorific stem such as mdzad.

Numerals

There are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting, as in many languages of East Asia, though words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.

In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.

Writing system

Tibetan is written with an Indic script, although some inhabitants in the Ladakh area write it phonetically with Urdu script.

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).

Among the initials, five — ག g, ད d, བ b, མ m, འ ' — are regarded as prefixes, and are called so for all purposes, though they belong sometimes to the stem. As a rule, none of these letters can be placed before any of the same organic class. The language is much ruled by laws of euphony, which have been strictly formulated by native grammarians.

Phonological history

The concurrence of the evidence indicated above enables us to form the following outline of the evolution of Tibetan. In the 9th century, as shown by the bilingual Tibeto-Chinese treaty of 821–822 found in front of Lhasa's Jokhang, the complex initial clusters had already been reduced, and the process of tonogenesis was likely well underway.

The next change took place in Tsang (Gtsang) dialects: The ra-tags were altered into cerebral dentals, and the ya-tags became palatals.

Later on the superscribed letters and finals d and s disappeared, except in the east and west. It was at this stage that the language spread in Lahul and Spiti, where the superscribed letters were silent, the d and g finals were hardly heard, and as, os, us were ai, oi, ui. The words introduced from Tibet into the border languages at that time differ greatly from those introduced at an earlier period.

The other changes are more recent and restricted to Ü and Tsang. The vowel sounds ai, oi, ui have become ë, ã, iZ; and a, o, u before the finals d and n are now a, ö, ü. The medials have become aspirate tenues with a low intonation, which also marks the words having a simple initial consonant; while the former aspirates and the complex initials simplified in speech are uttered with a high tone, shrill and rapidly. An inhabitant of Lhasa, for example, finds the distinction between s and z, or between s andz, not in the consonant, but in the tone, pronouncing s and s with a high note and l and l with a low one.

Phonology

Old Tibetan phonology is rather accurately rendered by the script. The finals were pronounced devoiced although they are written as voiced, the 'prefix' letters assimilated their voicing to the 'root' letters. The graphic combinations hr and lh represent voiceless and not necessarily aspirate correspondences to r and l respectively. The letter ' was pronounced as a voiced guttural fricative before vowels but as homorganic prenasalization before consonants. Whether the gigu verso had phonetic meaning or not remains controversial.

e.g. Srong rtsan Sgam po would have been pronounced zgampo and 'babs would have been pronounced ^*

Already in the 9th century the process of cluster simplification, devoicing and tonogenesis had begun in the central dialects can be shown with Tibetan words transliterated in other languages, particularly Middle Chinese but also Uyghur.

Studies

Since at least around the 7th century when the Chinese came into contact with the Tibetans, phonetics and grammar of Tibetan have been studied and documented. Tibetans also studied their own language, mostly for translation purpose for diplomacy (with India and China) or religion (from Buddhism).

Western linguists who arrived at Tibet in the 18th and 19th century include:

Hungarian Alexander Csoma de Körös (1784–1842) published the first Tibetan-European language dictionary (Classical Tibetan and English in this case) and grammar.
H. A. Jäschke of the Moravian mission which was established in Ladak in 1857: modern Tibetan
The Capuchin friars who were settled in Lhasa for a quarter of a century from 1719
- Francisco Orazio della Penna, well known from his accurate description of Tibet
- Cassian di Macerata sent home materials which were utilized by the Augustine friar Aug. Antonio Georgi of Rimini (1711–1797) in his Alphabetum Tibetanum (Rome, 1762, 4t0), a ponderous and confused compilation, which may be still referred to, but with great caution.
At St Petersburg, J. J. Schmidt published his Grammatik der tibetischen Sprache in 1839 and his Tibetisch-deutsches Wörterbuch in 1841, but neither of these works justified the great pretensions of the author, whose access to Mongolian sources had enabled him to enrich the results of his labours with a certain amount of information unknown to his predecessors.
- His Tibetische Studien (1851–1868) is a valuable collection of documents and observations.
In France, P. E. Foucaux published in 1847 a translation from the Rgya tcher rol-pa, the Tibetan version of the Lalita Vistara, and in 1858 a Grammaire thibitaine
Ant. Schiefner of St Petersburg in 1849 his series of translations and researches.

A good bibliography of Tibetan linguistic research is available here ^*

External links

Books

Manual of Standard Tibetan, Nicolas Tournadre and Sangda Dorje, Snow Lion 2003, ISBN 1559391898.
Tibetan-English Dictionary (With Sanskrit Synonyms), Sarat Chandra Das, Motilal Banarsidass 2000, ISBN 8120817133.
An Introduction to Classical Tibetan, Stephen Hodge, Orchid Press 2003, ISBN 974-524-039-7

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