The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''

abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...

'') of

Indic Indic may refer to: * Indic languages (disambiguation) * Various scripts: ** Brahmic scripts, a family of scripts used to write Indian and other Asian languages ** Kharosthi (extinct) * Indian numerals * Indian religions, also known as the Dharmic ...

origin used to write certain

Tibetic languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptiv ...

, including

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...

Dzongkha Dzongkha (; ) is a Sino-Tibetan 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". , Dzongkha had 171,080 n ...

, Sikkimese, Ladakhi,

Jirel The Jirels ( ne, जिरेल जाति) is an ethnic Kirat The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from ...

and Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali. 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 used f ...

while the hand-written cursive 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 the ...

. This writing system is used across the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

, and

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

. The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous ...

and

. The Tibetan script is of

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

origin 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 ...

and is ancestral to scripts such as Meitei, Lepcha,Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. ''The World's Writing Systems''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Marchen and the multilingual

ʼPhags-pa script The Phags-pa script is an alphabet designed by the Tibetan monk and State Preceptor (later Imperial Preceptor) Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yu ...

History

According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was introduced by

Thonmi Sambhota Thonmi Sambhota (Thönmi Sambhoṭa, aka Tonmi Sambhodha;, Tib. , Wyl. thon mi sam+b+ho Ta; b. seventh cent.) is traditionally regarded as the inventor of the Tibetan script and author of the ''Sum cu pa'' and ''Rtags kyi 'jug pa'' in the 7th cen ...

in the first half of the 7th century, mainly for the codification of the sacred Buddhist texts. From a contemporary academic perspective, this is merely a legend invented in the second half of the 11th century (cf. Miller 1963; Róna-Tas 1985: 183–303; Zeisler 2005). New research and writings suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to the introduction of the current script by

Songtsen Gampo Songtsen Gampo (; 569–649? 650), also Songzan Ganbu (), was the 33rd Tibetan king and founder of the Tibetan Empire, and is traditionally credited with the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, influenced by his Nepali consort Bhrikuti, of Nepal ...

and

. The Tunhong manuscripts are key evidence for this hypothesis. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of

Buddhist scriptures Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts a ...

, 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 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 the Tibetan dialect spoken by educated people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branch ...

Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level city, prefecture-level Lhasa (prefecture-level city), Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Regio ...

, 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 ar ...

, 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 (or Himalayan) Buddhism. The Kagyu lineag ...

'' 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 dialects, the farmer dialect and the nomad dialect. Amdo is one of the three branches of traditional cl ...

and the western dialects of Ladakhi, as well as Balti, come very close to the

Old Tibetan Old Tibetan refers to the period of Tibetan language reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to works of the early 11th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan u ...

spellings. But the grammar of these varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the classical 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 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from oth ...

would be the same as to write Italian according to that of Latin, or to write Hindi according to that of Sanskrit. However, modern Buddhist elites in the Indian subcontinent insisted the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages to modernize or to introduce a written tradition.

was one of a few examples where the Buddhist elites initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform in Ladakhi was so controversial, however, partly because it was first initiated by Christian missionaries.

Description

Basic alphabet

In the Tibetan script, the

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

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 basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. As in other

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

, 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. For example, if the Latin alphabet used 'i' as an inherent vowel, "Wikipedia" could be rendered as "W ...

; 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

Tibetan map of the Kizil Caves (13th entury CE)

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, whil ...

forming

s. 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 /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 /rɲa/. Similarly, the consonants /wa/, /ra/, and /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants; thus /kwa/; /kra/; /kja/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance, the consonants /ʰka/, /ʰta/, /ʰpa/, /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 /ʰka/, /na/, /ʰpa/, /ʰta/, /ma/, /a/, /ra/, /ŋa/, /sa/, and /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position is solely for the consonants /ʰta/ and /sa/.

Head letters

The 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/, /tʃa/, /ta/, /pa/ and /tsa/, there are no changes in the sound in Central Lhasa Tibetan. In that language,they look and sound like: ** /ka/, /ta/, /pa/, /tsa/ ** /ka/, /tʃa/, /ta/, /pa/, ** /ka/, /tʃa/, /ta/, /pa/, /tsa/ *When /ra/, /la/, and /sa/ are in superscript position with /ʰka/, /ʰtʃa/, /ʰta/, /ʰpa/ and /ʰtsa/, they lose their aspiration and become voiced in Central Lhasa Tibetan. In that language,they look and sound like: ** /ga/, /d͡ʒa/, /da/, /ba/, /dza/ ** /ga/, /d͡ʒa/, /da/, /ba/, ** /ga/, /d͡ʒa/, /da/, /ba/, /dza/ *When /ra/, /la/, and /sa/ are in superscript position with /ŋa/, /ɲa/, /na/ and /ma/, the nasal sound gets high in Central Lhasa Tibetan. In that language,they look and sound like: ** /ŋa/, /ɲa/, /na/, /ma/ ** /ŋa/, /ma/ ** /ŋa/, /ɲa/, /na/, /ma/

Sub-joined letters

The subscript position under a radical is for the consonants /ja/, /ra/, /la/, and /wa/.

Vowel marks

The

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

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 loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

s, especially transcribed from the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

Numerical digits

Punctuation marks

Extended use

The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti 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 and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...

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 ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), 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 har ...

" ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ṇa, ṣa are represented in Tibetan by reversing the letters (ta, tha, da, na, sha) to give (Ta, Tha, Da, Na, Sa). *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

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 Roman script, is an alphabetic 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 southern Italy ...

. 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 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 and published i ...

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:

(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)ALA-LC Romanization of Tibetan script (PDF)
/ref> 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 on ...

(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, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

. The layout has been available in

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

since September 2007. In

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

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 Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. 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, rebranded "M ...

-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 (), also called the 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 ...

(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, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

ISO 10646 ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

standards since the initial version. Since the arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha (dz) 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 and open source software under the X ...

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), a ...

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.

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THDL The Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL), formerly the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (THDL), is a multimedia guide and digital library hosted by the University of Virginia focused on the languages, history and geography of Tibet and the Him ...

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