Everything about The Tibetan Script totally explained
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 (; "with a head") while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called
umé script (; "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.
History
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 hasn't 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's pronounced", for example, writing "
Kagyu" instead of "Bka'-rgyud".
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
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.
| ཀ ka [ká] |
ཁ kha [kʰá] |
ག ga [ɡà/kʰà] |
ང nga [ŋà] |
| ཅ ca [tɕá] |
ཆ cha [tɕʰá] |
ཇ ja [dʑà/tɕʰà] |
ཉ nya [ɲà] |
| ཏ ta [tá] |
ཐ tha [tʰá] |
ད da [dà/tʰà] |
ན na [nà] |
| པ pa [pá] |
ཕ pha [pʰá] |
བ ba [bà/pʰà] |
མ ma [mà] |
| ཙ tsa [tsá] |
ཚ tsha [tsʰá] |
ཛ dza [dzà/tsʰà] |
ཝ wa [wà] |
| ཞ zha [ʑà/ɕà] |
ཟ za [zà/sà] |
འ 'a [ʔà] |
ཡ ya [jà] |
| ར ra [rà] |
ལ la [là] |
ཤ sha [ɕá] |
ས sa [sá] |
| ཧ ha [há] |
ཨ a [ʔá] |
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).
| ཊ ṭa |
Ta |
[???] |
| ཋ ṭha |
Tha |
[???] |
| ཌ ḍa |
Da |
[???] |
| ཎ ṇa |
Na |
[???] |
| ཥ ṣa |
Sa |
[???] |
As in other Indic scripts, clustered consonants are often stacked vertically. Unfortunately, some fonts and applications don't 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're beneath another consonant; thus ཀྭ kwa; ཀྲ kra; ཀྱ kya. R also changes form when it's above most other consonants; thus རྐ rka. An exception is the cluster རྙ rnya.
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). Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tibetan Script'.
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