The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or ''

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

'', forming a part of the

Brahmic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

, and used to write certain

Tibetic languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descending from Old Tibetan.Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the ...

, including Tibetan,

Dzongkha Dzongkha (; ) is a Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script. The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language ...

, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. Its exact origins are a subject of research but is traditionally considered to be developed by

Thonmi Sambhota Thonmi Sambhota (Thönmi Sambhoṭa, (Tib. , Wylie transcription, Wylie ''thon mi sam+b+ho Ta''; c.619-7th C.) is a figure credited by Tibetan traditions with creating the first Tibetan script, based on the Gupta script, Gupta alphabet, after bei ...

for King

Songtsen Gampo Songtsen Gampo (Classical , pronounced ) (; (601–683 CE, reign 614-648) was the 33rd Tibetan king of the Yarlung dynasty and the founder of the Tibetan Empire. The first of three Dharma Kings of Tibet, he formally introduced Buddhism to Tib ...

. The printed form is called

uchen script } Uchen (; ; variant spellings include ''ucen'', ''u-cen'', ''u-chen'', ''ucan'', ''u-can'', ''uchan'', ''u-chan'', and ''ucän'') is the upright, block style of the Tibetan script. The name means "with a head", and is the style of the script use ...

while the hand-written form used in everyday writing is called

umê script Umê (, ; variant spellings include ''ume'', ''u-me'') is a semi-formal script used to write the Tibetan alphabet used for both calligraphy and shorthand. The name ''ume'' means "headless" and refers to its distinctive feature: the absence of th ...

. This writing system is especially used across the Himalayan Region.

History

Little is known about the exact origins of Tibetan script. According to Tibetan

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

, it was developed during the reign of King

by his minister Thonmi Sambhota, who was sent to India along with other scholars to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and other brahmi languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the

Gupta script The Gupta script (sometimes referred to as Gupta Brahmi script or Late Brahmi script)Sharma, Ram. '' 'Brahmi Script' ''. Delhi: BR Publishing Corp, 2002 was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of the Indian subcon ...

while at the Pabonka Hermitage. This occurred , towards the beginning of Songtsen Gampo's reign. There were 21

Sutra ''Sutra'' ()Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a ...

texts held by the King which were translated afterwards. In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan script was used for the codification of these sacred Buddhist texts, for written civil laws, and for a Tibetan Constitution. Earliest sources on Tibet, such as the Old Tibetan Chronicle, do not mention any Thonmi Sambhota. Scripts predating Songtsen Gampo might have existed but in any case do not appear to be widely used. Researchers postulate that Tibetan kings sought to develop a system of writing as their territory expanded. The script resembling the version today was likely developed in the second half of the 11th century. New research and writings also suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to the introduction of the script by

and

. The incomplete

Dunhuang manuscripts The Dunhuang manuscripts are a wide variety of religious and secular documents (mostly manuscripts, including Hemp paper, hemp, silk, paper and Woodblock printing, woodblock-printed texts) in Old Tibetan, Tibetan, Chinese, and other languages tha ...

are their key evidence for their hypothesis, while the few discovered and recorded Old Tibetan Annals manuscripts date from 650 and therefore post-date the c. 620 date of development of the original Tibetan script. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of

Buddhist scriptures Buddhist texts are religious texts that belong to, or are associated with, Buddhism and its traditions. There is no single textual collection for all of Buddhism. Instead, there are three main Buddhist Canons: the Pāli Canon of the Therav ...

emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not been altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex

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

s. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the

Standard Tibetan Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan is a standardized dialect of Tibetan spoken by the people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branched" ...

Lhasa Lhasa, officially the Chengguan District of Lhasa City, is the inner urban district of Lhasa (city), Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region, Southwestern China. Lhasa is the second most populous urban area on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining ...

, there is a great divergence between current spelling, which still reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan, and current pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of

spelling reform A spelling reform is a deliberate, often authoritatively sanctioned or mandated change to spelling rules. Proposals for such reform are fairly common, and over the years, many languages have undergone such reforms. Recent high-profile examples a ...

, to write Tibetan ''as it is pronounced''; for example, writing ''

Kagyu The ''Kagyu'' school, also transliterated as ''Kagyü'', or ''Kagyud'' (), which translates to "Oral Lineage" or "Whispered Transmission" school, is one of the main schools (''chos lugs'') of Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan (or Himalayan) Buddhism. ...

'' instead of ''Bka'-rgyud''. The nomadic

Amdo Tibetan Amdo Tibetan (; also called ''Am kä'') is the Tibetic language spoken in Amdo (now mostly in Qinghai, some in Ngawa and Gannan). It has two varieties, the farmer dialects and the nomad dialects. Amdo is one of the three branches of tradition ...

and the western dialects of the

Ladakhi language The Ladakhi language is a Tibetic language spoken in the Indian union territory of Ladakh. It is the predominant language in the Buddhist-dominated district of Leh district, Leh, and a minority language in the district of Kargil district#Langua ...

, as well as the

Balti language Balti (Perso-Arabic script: , Tibetan script: སྦལ་ཏི།, ) is a Tibetic language natively spoken by the ethnic Balti people in the Baltistan region of Gilgit-Baltistan, Nubra Valley of the Leh district and in the Kargil distric ...

, come close to the

Old Tibetan Old Tibetan refers to the earliest attested form of Tibetan language, reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to the early 9th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Tibetan King Sadnaleg ...

spellings. Despite that, the grammar of these dialectical varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the orthography and grammar of

Classical Tibetan Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 7th century until the modern day (along with Arabic, Ge'ez, and New Persian, it is one of the handful of 'living' ...

would be similar to writing Sanskrit orthography. However, modern Buddhist practitioners in the Indian subcontinent state that the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages wishing to modernize or introduce a new spelling reform of Tibetan.

Description

Basic alphabet

In the Tibetan script, the

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

s are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a ''tsek'' (་); since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space. Spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants.Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. ''The World's Writing Systems''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, As in other

Indic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

, each consonant letter assumes an

inherent vowel An inherent vowel is part of an abugida (or alphasyllabary) script. It is a vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol. There are many known abugida scripts, including most of the Brahmic scripts and Kharosthi, the c ...

; in the Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter is also the base for dependent vowel marks. Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal, the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features, they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words.

Consonant clusters

One 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

subscript and superscript A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, wh ...

forming

s. To understand how this works, one can look at the radical /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes /kra/ or /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for /ka/ is used, but when the /ra/ is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants /ra/, and /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; /ca/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance, the consonants /kʰa/, /tʰa/, /pʰa/, /ma/ and /a/ 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 /kʰa/, /na/, /pʰa/, /tʰa/, /ma/, /a/, /ra/, /ŋa/, /sa/, and /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position is solely for the consonants /tʰa/ and /sa/.

Head letters

The head ( in Tibetan, Wylie: ''mgo'') letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants /ra/, /la/, and /sa/. *When /ra/, /la/, and /sa/ are in superscript position with /ka/, /t͡ʃa/, /ta/, /pa/ and /t͡sa/, there are no changes to their sounds in Lhasa Tibetan, for example: ** /ka/, /ta/, /pa/, /t͡sa/ ** /ka/, /t͡ʃa/, /ta/, /pa/, ** /ka/, /ta/, /pa/, /t͡sa/ *When /ra/, /la/, and /sa/ are in superscript position with /kʰa/, /t͡ʃʰa/, /tʰa/, /pʰa/ and /t͡sʰa/, they lose their aspiration and become voiced in Lhasa Tibetan, for example: ** /ga/, /d͡ʒa/, /da/, /ba/, /dza/ ** /ga/, /d͡ʒa/, /da/, /ba/, ** /ga/, /da/, /ba/ *When /ra/, /la/, and /sa/ are in superscript position with the nasal consonants /ŋa/, /ɲya/, /na/ and /ma/, they receive a high tone in Lhasa Tibetan, for example: ** /ŋa/, /ɲa/, /na/, /ma/ ** /ŋa/ ** /ŋa/, /ɲa/, /na/, /ma/ *When /la/ is in superscript position with /ha/, it becomes a

voiceless alveolar lateral approximant The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , a ...

in Lhasa Tibetan: ** /l̥a/,

Sub-joined letters

The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants /ja/, /ra/, /la/, and /wa/. In this position they are described as (Wylie: ''btags'', IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for , which is simply read as it usually is and has no effect on the pronunciation of the consonant to which it is subjoined, for example (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/).

Vowel marks

The

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s used in the alphabet are /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, 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.

included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s, especially transcribed from the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

Numerical digits

Punctuation marks

Extended use

The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti, Chinese and

, often has additional and/or modified

graphemes In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...

taken from the basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds.

Extended alphabet

*In Balti, consonants ka, ra are represented by reversing the letters (ka, ra) to give (qa, ɽa). *The

retroflex consonants A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants ...

ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ṇa, ṣa are represented in Tibetan by the letters (ta, tha, da, na, sha) *It is a classical rule to transliterate Sanskrit ca, cha, ja, jha, to Tibetan (tsa, tsha, dza, dzha), respectively. Nowadays, (ca, cha, ja, jha) can also be used.

Extended vowel marks and modifiers

Consonant clusters

In addition to the use of supplementary graphemes, the rules for constructing consonant clusters are amended, allowing any character to occupy the superscript or subscript position, negating the need for the prescript and postscript positions.

Romanization and transliteration

Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

. Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the

Wylie transliteration Wylie transliteration is a method for Transliteration, transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English-language typewriter. The system is named for the American scholar Turrell V. Wylie, who created the system ...

system is widely used to Romanize

, others include the Library of Congress system and the IPA-based transliteration (Jacques 2012). Below is a table with Tibetan letters and different Romanization and transliteration system for each letter, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP),

phonetic (DP),

ALA-LC Romanization ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script. Applications The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...

(A) and

THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription The THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan (or ''THL Phonetic Transcription'' for short) is a system for the phonetic rendering of the Tibetan language. It was created by David Germano and Nicolas Tournadre and was published ...

(THL).

Input method and keyboard layout

Tibetan

The first version of Microsoft Windows to support the Tibetan keyboard layout is MS

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

. The layout has been available in

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

since September 2007. In

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

12.04, one can install Tibetan language support through Dash / Language Support / Install/Remove Languages, the input method can be turned on from Dash / Keyboard Layout, adding Tibetan keyboard layout. The layout applies the similar layout as in Microsoft Windows.

Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

-X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani.

Dzongkha

The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme is designed as a simple means for inputting

text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the

Dzongkha Development Commission The Dzongkha Development Commission (; DDC) is the pre-eminent body on matters pertaining to the Dzongkha language. The DDC was officially established in 1986 by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the fourth king of Bhutan, to preserve and promote the use o ...

(DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the

Royal Government of Bhutan The government of Bhutan has been a constitutional monarchy since 18 July 2008. The King of Bhutan is the head of state. The executive power is exercised by the Lhengye Zhungtshog, or council of ministers, headed by the Prime Minister. Legislat ...

in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

ISO 10646 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Mem ...

standards since the initial version. Since the arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongka and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongka keyboard layout is included in Microsoft Windows, Android, and most distributions of Linux as part of

XFree86 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free software, free and Open-source softw ...

Unicode

Tibetan was originally one of the scripts in the first version of the

Standard 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 Burmese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia * Burmese people * Burmese language * Burmese alphabet * Burmese cuisine * Burmese culture Animals * Burmese cat * Burmese chicken * Burmese (horse) ...

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:

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

* Asher, R. E. ed. ''The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. Tarrytown, NY: Pergamon Press, 1994. 10 vol. * Beyer, Stephan V. (1993). ''The Classical Tibetan Language''. Reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru. * Chamberlain, Bradford Lynn. 2008. Script Selection for Tibetan-related Languages in Multiscriptal Environments. ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language'' 192:117–132. * Csoma de Kőrös, Alexander. (1983). ''A Grammar of the Tibetan Language''. Reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru. * Csoma de Kőrös, Alexander (1980–1982). ''Sanskrit-Tibetan-English Vocabulary''. 2 vols. Reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru. * Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. ''The World's Writing Systems''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. * Das, Sarat Chandra: "The Sacred and Ornamental Characters of Tibet". ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'', vol. 57 (1888), pp. 41–48 and 9 plates. * Das, Sarat Chandra. (1996). ''An Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language''. Reprinted by Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. * Jacques, Guillaume 2012
A new transcription system for Old and Classical Tibetan
, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 35.3:89-96. * Jäschke, Heinrich August. (1989). ''Tibetan Grammar''. Corrected by Sunil Gupta. Reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru.

External links

Tibetan Calligraphy
—Online guide for writing Tibetan script.
Elements of the Tibetan writing system

Unicode area U0F00-U0FFF, Tibetan script (162KB)

Digital Tibetan
—Online resource for the digitalization of Tibetan.

�� THDL articles on Unicode font issues; free cross-platform OpenType fonts—Unicode compatible.
Free Tibetan Fonts Project

{{Authority control Dzongkha language Brahmic scripts Writing systems without word boundaries

History

Description

Basic alphabet

Consonant clusters

Head letters

Sub-joined letters

Vowel marks

Numerical digits

Punctuation marks

Extended use

Extended alphabet

Extended vowel marks and modifiers

Consonant clusters

Romanization and transliteration

Input method and keyboard layout

Tibetan

Dzongkha

Unicode

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

External links