The Amdo language is the spoken language of the majority of the people of Amdo in northeastern Tibet, in Chinese states of Qinghai and some parts of Sichuan (Aba) and Gansu (Ganlho). It is one of the four main spoken languages of Tibetan, the other three being Standard Tibetan

Standard Tibetan

Standard Tibetan 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...

 (ü ke) Kham

Khams Tibetan language

Khams Tibetan is the Tibetan language used by the majority of the people in the Kham region of eastern Tibet . It is one of the four main spoken languages of Tibetan, the other three being those of U-Tsang , Amdo and Western Tibetan...

 (kham ke) and Ladakhi

Ladakhi language

The Ladakhi language , now also called Bhoti, and by linguists more generally called Western Archaic Tibetan when the Balti and Burig or Purig or Purki dialects are included, is the predominant language in the Ladakh region of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India, and is also spoken in Baltistan...

 (tö ke). All four main languages of Tibetan share a common written script but their spoken pronunciations, vocabularies and grammars are different. These differences may have emerged due to geographical isolation of the regions of Tibet. Unlike Khams language and standard Tibetan, Amdo language is not tonal. It retains many word-initial consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....

s which have been lost in Central Tibetan.

Spoken Dialects

The majority of the Amdo people speak a common Amdo dialect. However there are many other minor accents spoken in isolated valleys, referred to as lung ke.

Media

Radio Free Asia broadcasts in three Tibetan languages: Standard Tibetan, Khams language and Amdo language.

The Qinghai Television station broadcasts in Amdo language and Chinese language.

See also

• Tibetan languages
• Ü-Tsang Tibetan language
  Ü-Tsang
  Ü-Tsang , or Tsang-Ü, is one of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, the other two being Amdo and Kham. Geographically Ü-Tsang covered the central and western portions of the Tibetan cultural area, including the Tsang-po watershed, the western districts surrounding and extending past Mount...
  
  
• Khams Tibetan language
  Khams Tibetan language
  Khams Tibetan is the Tibetan language used by the majority of the people in the Kham region of eastern Tibet . It is one of the four main spoken languages of Tibetan, the other three being those of U-Tsang , Amdo and Western Tibetan...
  
  
• Ladakhi language
  Ladakhi language
  The Ladakhi language , now also called Bhoti, and by linguists more generally called Western Archaic Tibetan when the Balti and Burig or Purig or Purki dialects are included, is the predominant language in the Ladakh region of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India, and is also spoken in Baltistan...
  
  
• Balti dialect

External links

• A Bibliography of Tibetan Linguistics
• A Week in Rebkong, Amdo, an Amdo primer

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