Tibetan script
Encyclopedia
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida
of Indic
origin used to write the Tibetan language
as well as the Dzongkha language
, Denzongkha
, Ladakhi language
and sometimes the Balti language
. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê
. The alphabet is very closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity. Besides Tibet, it has also been used for Tibetan languages in Bhutan
, India
, Nepal
, and Pakistan
. The Tibetan alphabet is ancestral to the Limbu alphabet, the Lepcha alphabet, and the multilingual 'Phags-pa script.
The Tibetan alphabet is romanized
in a variety of ways. This article employs the Wylie transliteration system.
of the mid-7th century. 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 alphabet. The form of the letter
s is based on an Indic alphabet of that period.
Three orthographic standardizations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures, emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not altered since then, while the spoken language has changed
by, for example, losing complex consonant cluster
s. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, in particular in the Standard Tibetan
of Lhasa
, there is a great divergence between spelling (which reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan) and pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform
, to write Tibetan "as it is pronounced", for example, writing "Kagyu
" instead of "Bka'-rgyud". In contrast, the pronunciation of the Balti
, Ladakhi
and Burig
languages adheres more closely to the archaic spelling.
s, sometimes known as radicals, which are the basis of the script.
As in other Indic scripts, each consonant letter assumes an inherent /a/. However, a unique aspect of the Tibetan script is that the consonants can be written either as radicals, or they can be written in other forms, such as superscripts and subscripts. The superscript position above a radical is reserved for the consonants r, l, and s, while the subscript position under a radical is for the consonants y, r, l, and w. To understand how this works, one can look at the radical "ka" and see what happens when it becomes "kra" or "rka". In both cases, the symbol for "ka" is used, but when the r is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the r comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. R actually changes form when it is above most other consonants; thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster rnya. Similarly, the consonants w, r, and y change form when they are beneath other consonants; thus kwa; kra; kya.
Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance, the consonants g, d, b, m, and ’a ("’a chung") can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants g, n, b, d, m, ’a, r, n̄, s, and l. The third position, the post-postscript position, is solely for the consonants d and s.
The vowel
s used in the alphabet are a, i, u, e, and o. While the vowel a is included in each consonant or radical, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. The vowels i, e, and o are placed above consonants as diacritics, while the vowel u is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a gigu 'verso' of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanword
s, especially transcribed from the Sanskrit.
In the Tibetan script, the syllable
s are written from left to right. 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, the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated glyphs for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words.
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.
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The Sanskrit "cerebral" (retroflex) consonants ट ठ ड ण ष are represented by the reversing the letters ཏ ཐ ད ན ཤ (ta, tha, da, na, sha) to give ཊ ཋ ཌ ཎ ཥ (Ta, Tha, Da, Na, Sa).
It is a classic rule to transliterate च छ ज झ (ca cha ja jha) to ཙ ཚ ཛ ཛྷ (tsa tsha dza dzha), respectively. Nowadays, ཅ ཆ ཇ ཇྷ (ca cha ja jha) can also be used.
Standerd in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0.
The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:
Abugida
An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
of Indic
Brahmic family
The Brahmic or Indic scripts are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia , Southeast Asia, and parts of Central and East Asia, and are descended from the Brāhmī script of the ancient Indian subcontinent...
origin used to write the Tibetan language
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
as well as the Dzongkha language
Dzongkha language
Dzongkha , occasionally Ngalopkha, is the national language of Bhutan. The word "dzongkha" means the language spoken in the dzong, – dzong being the fortress-like monasteries established throughout Bhutan by Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal in the 17th century."Bhutani" is not another name for...
, Denzongkha
Sikkimese language
The Sikkimese language, also called Sikkimese Tibetan, Bhutia, Dranjongke , Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke, and Denzongke, belongs to the Southern Tibetan language family. It is spoken by the Bhutia nationality in Sikkim...
, 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...
and sometimes the Balti language
Balti language
Balti is a language spoken in Baltistan, in Gilgit-Baltistan of Pakistan and adjoining parts of Ladakh. Baltistan, before 1948, was part of Ladakh province. The Balti language is a dialect of the Ladakhi language, a form of Tibetan. It is mutually intelligible with Ladakhi proper and Burig...
. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê
Ume
Prunus mume, with the common names including Chinese plum and Japanese apricot, is an Asian tree species classified in the Armeniaca section of the genus Prunus. The flower, long a beloved subject in the traditional painting of East Asia, is usually translated as plum blossom. This distinct tree...
. The alphabet is very closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity. Besides Tibet, it has also been used for Tibetan languages in Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. The Tibetan alphabet is ancestral to the Limbu alphabet, the Lepcha alphabet, and the multilingual 'Phags-pa script.
The Tibetan alphabet is romanized
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
in a variety of ways. This article employs the Wylie transliteration system.
History
The creation of the Tibetan alphabet is attributed to Thonmi SambhotaThonmi Sambhota
Thonmi Sambhota [bhrahmi samhita; localized form of ]is traditionally regarded as the creator of the Tibetan script and author of the Sum cu pa and Rtags kyi 'jug pa in the 7th century AD. Thonmi Sambhota is not mentioned in any of the Old Tibetan Annals or other ancient texts, although the Annals...
of the mid-7th century. Tradition holds that Thonmi Sambhota, a minister of Songtsen Gampo
Songtsen Gampo
Songtsän Gampo Songtsän Gampo Songtsän Gampo (Tibetan: སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ་, Wylie: Srong-btsan sGam-po, 569–649?/605–649? was the founder of the Tibetan Empire (Tibetan: Bod; ), by tradition held to be the thirty-third ruler in his dynasty. In the Chinese records, his name is given as 'Sōngzàngānbù'...
(569-649), was sent to India to study the art of writing, and upon his return introduced the alphabet. The form of the letter
Letter (alphabet)
A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
s is based on an Indic alphabet of that period.
Three orthographic standardizations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures, emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not altered since then, while the spoken language has changed
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
by, for example, losing complex 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. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, in particular in the 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...
of Lhasa
Lhasa
Lhasa is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China and the second most populous city on the Tibetan Plateau, after Xining. At an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world...
, there is a great divergence between spelling (which reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan) and pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform
Spelling reform
Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....
, to write Tibetan "as it is pronounced", for example, writing "Kagyu
Kagyu
The Kagyu, Kagyupa, or Kagyud school, also known as the "Oral Lineage" or Whispered Transmission school, is today regarded as one of six main schools of Himalayan or Tibetan Buddhism, the other five being the Nyingma, Sakya, Jonang, Bon and Gelug...
" instead of "Bka'-rgyud". In contrast, the pronunciation of the Balti
Balti language
Balti is a language spoken in Baltistan, in Gilgit-Baltistan of Pakistan and adjoining parts of Ladakh. Baltistan, before 1948, was part of Ladakh province. The Balti language is a dialect of the Ladakhi language, a form of Tibetan. It is mutually intelligible with Ladakhi proper and Burig...
, 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...
and Burig
Burig
The Burig, or Purik, are another group of Tibetan Muslims with small Dardic admixture, who live south of the Balti in Ladakh. Most of them live in Ladakh and Baltistan, especially in Kargil, although significant numbers reside in Leh....
languages adheres more closely to the archaic spelling.
Description
The Tibetan alphabet has 30 consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s, sometimes known as radicals, which are the basis of the script.
| ཀ ka | ཁ kha | ག ga | ང nga |
| ཅ ca | ཆ cha | ཇ ja | ཉ nya |
| ཏ ta | ཐ tha | ད da | ན na |
| པ pa | ཕ pha | བ ba | མ ma |
| ཙ tsa | ཚ tsha | ཛ dza | ཝ wa (not originally part of the alphabet) |
| ཞ zha | ཟ za | འ 'a | |
| ཡ ya | ར ra | ལ la | |
| ཤ sha | ས sa | ཧ ha | |
| ཨ a |
Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance, the consonants g, d, b, m, and ’a ("’a chung") can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants g, n, b, d, m, ’a, r, n̄, s, and l. The third position, the post-postscript position, is solely for the consonants d and s.
The vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s used in the alphabet are a, i, u, e, and o. While the vowel a is included in each consonant or radical, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. The vowels i, e, and o are placed above consonants as diacritics, while the vowel u is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a gigu 'verso' of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s, especially transcribed from the Sanskrit.
In the Tibetan script, the syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s are written from left to right. 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, the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated glyphs for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words.
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.
Transliteration of Sanskrit
Vowels
| Devanagari Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... |
IAST IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:... |
Tibetan | Dependent vowel signs | Devanagari Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... |
IAST IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:... |
Tibetan | Dependent vowel signs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| अ | औ | |||||||
| आ | ऋ | |||||||
| इ | ॠ | |||||||
| ई | ऌ | |||||||
| उ | ॡ | |||||||
| ऊ | | | अं | ||||||
| ए | अँ | |||||||
| ऐ | अः |
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|}
Consonants
| Devanagari Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... |
IAST IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:... |
Tibetan | Devanagari Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... |
IAST IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:... |
Tibetan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| क | ཀ | द | ད | |||
| ख | ཁ | ध | དྷ | |||
| ग | ག | न | ན | |||
| घ | གྷ | प | པ | |||
| ङ | ང | फ | ཕ | |||
| च | ཙ | ब | བ | |||
| छ | ཚ | भ | བྷ | |||
| ज | ཛ | म | མ | |||
| झ | ཛྷ | य | ཡ | |||
| ञ | ཉ | र | ར | |||
| ट | ཊ | ल | ལ | |||
| ठ | ཋ | व | ཝ | |||
| ड | ཌ | श | ཤ | |||
| ढ | ཌྷ | ष | ཥ | |||
| ण | ཎ | स | ས | |||
| त | ཏ | ह | ཧ | |||
| थ | ཐ | क्ष | ཀྵ |
The Sanskrit "cerebral" (retroflex) consonants ट ठ ड ण ष are represented by the reversing the letters ཏ ཐ ད ན ཤ (ta, tha, da, na, sha) to give ཊ ཋ ཌ ཎ ཥ (Ta, Tha, Da, Na, Sa).
It is a classic rule to transliterate च छ ज झ (ca cha ja jha) to ཙ ཚ ཛ ཛྷ (tsa tsha dza dzha), respectively. Nowadays, ཅ ཆ ཇ ཇྷ (ca cha ja jha) can also be used.
Unicode
Tibetan was originally one of the scripts in the first version of UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
Standerd in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0.
The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:
See also
- THDL Simplified Phonetic TranscriptionTHDL Simplified Phonetic TranscriptionThe THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan is a system for the phonetic rendering of the Tibetan language.It was created by David Germano and Nicolas Tournadre and was published on 2003-12-12...
- Wylie transliterationWylie transliterationThe Wylie transliteration scheme is a method for transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English language typewriter. It bears the name of Turrell V. Wylie, who described the scheme in an article, A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription, published in 1959...
- Tibetan pinyinTibetan PinyinThe SASM/GNC/SRC romanization of Tibetan, commonly known as Tibetan pinyin, is the official transcription system for the Tibetan language in the People's Republic of China for personal name and place names. It is based on the Lhasa dialect of Standard Tibetan and reflects the pronunciation very...
- Tibetan calligraphyTibetan calligraphyTibetan calligraphy refers to the calligraphic traditions used to write the Tibetan language. As in other parts of East Asia, nobles, high lamas, and persons of high rank were expected to have high abilities in calligraphy. However, unlike calligraphy in China, Japan, and Korea, calligraphy was...
- Tise - input method for Tibetan scriptTiseTise is a Tibetan input method utility for Windows XP and Windows Vista created by Gregory Mokhin. The name of the program refers to the native name of Mount Kailash in Tibet....
- Balti script
- Limbu scriptLimbu scriptThe Limbu script is used to write the Limbu language. The Limbu script is an abugida derived from the Tibetan script.-History:According to traditional histories, the Limbu script was first invented in the late 9th century by King Sirijonga Haang, then fell out of use, to be reintroduced in the 18th...
External links
- Tibetan Calligraphy—how to write the Tibetan script.
- Learning to Write Tibetan by Don-grub (PDF 14 MB / DjVu 6.11 MB)
- Unicode area U0F00-U0FFF, Tibetan script (162KB)
- Encoding Model of the Tibetan Script in the UCS
- An index of documents related to the Encoding of Tibetan in the Unicode / ISO 10646 standards
- Jomolhari Font—Unicode compatible. Download
- Overview of Tibetan Unicode fonts
- Tibetan scripts and conservation by Tashi Mannox
- 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 Scripts, Fonts & Related Issues—THDL articles on Unicode font issues; free cross-platform OpenType fonts—Unicode compatible.
- Elements of The Tibetan writing system.
- Introduction to Tibetan Orthography, at Kuro5hinKuro5hinKuro5hin is a collaborative discussion website. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site...
- Free Tibetan Fonts Project
- Ancient Scripts: Tibetan
- Daicing Alphabet of Tibetan Transliteration (DAO) & Daicing Tibetan Keyboard