Tibetan script facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Tibetan
The mantra "Om mani padme hum"
Type	Abugida
Spoken languages	Tibetan Dzongkha Ladakhi Sikkimese Balti Sherpa Jirel Yolmo Tshangla Sanskrit
Time period	c. 620–present
Parent systems	Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Brahmi Gupta Tibetan
Child systems	Lepcha Khema Phagspa Marchen Tamyig
Sister systems	Meitei, Sharada, Siddham, Kalinga, Bhaiksuki
Unicode range	U+0F00–U+0FFF Final Accepted Script Proposal of the First Usable Edition (3.0)
ISO 15924	Tibt
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or abugida, derived from of Brahmic scripts and Gupta script, and used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. It was originally developed c.620 by Tibetan minister Thonmi Sambhota for King Songsten Gampo.

The Tibetan script has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali, Nepali and Old Turkic. The printed form is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script. This writing system is used across the Himalayas and Tibet.

The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Lepcha, Marchen and the multilingual ʼPhags-pa script, and is also closely related to Meitei.

History

According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was developed during the reign of King Songsten Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota, who was sent to India with 16 other students to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and written languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at the Pabonka Hermitage.

This occurred c.620, towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by the King which were afterward translated. 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.

A contemporary academic suggests that the script was instead 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 Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota. The incomplete Dunhuang manuscripts 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 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 clusters. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa, 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, to write Tibetan as it is pronounced; for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka'-rgyud.

The nomadic Amdo Tibetan and the western dialects of the Ladakhi language, as well as the Balti language, come very close to the Old Tibetan 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 would be similar to writing Italian according to Latin orthography, or to writing Hindi according to Sanskrit orthogrophy. 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 to introduce a written tradition. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where Buddhist practitioners initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform of the Ladakhi language was controversial in part because it was first initiated by Christian missionaries.

Description

Basic alphabet

In the Tibetan script, the syllables 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, each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel; in the Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter ཨ 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

Components of a Tibetan syllable

Tibetan map of the Kizil Caves, Tarim Basin. 13th century 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 forming consonant clusters.

To understand how this works, one can look at the radical ཀ /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes ཀྲ /kra/ or རྐ /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/ is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྲ /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; ཀྱ /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 ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/, མ /ma/ and འ /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 ག /kʰa/, ན /na/, བ /pʰa/, ད /tʰa/, མ /ma/, འ /a/, ར /ra/, ང /ŋa/, ས /sa/, and ལ /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/.

Head letters

The head (མགོ in Tibetan, Wylie: mgo) letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/.

• When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position with ཀ /ka/, ཅ /t͡ʃa/, ཏ /ta/, པ /pa/ and ཙ /t͡sa/, there are no changes to their sounds in Lhasa Tibetan, for example:
  • རྐ /ka/, རྟ /ta/, རྤ /pa/, རྩ /t͡sa/
  • ལྐ /ka/, ལྕ /t͡ʃa/, ལྟ /ta/, ལྤ /pa/,
  • སྐ /ka/, སྟ /ta/, སྤ /pa/, སྩ /t͡sa/
• When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position with ག /kʰa/, ཇ /t͡ʃʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/ and ཛ /t͡sʰa/, they lose their aspiration and become voiced in Lhasa Tibetan, for example:
  • རྒ /ga/, རྗ /d͡ʒa/, རྡ /da/, རྦ /ba/, རྫ /dza/
  • ལྒ /ga/, ལྗ /d͡ʒa/, ལྡ /da/, ལྦ /ba/,
  • སྒ /ga/, སྡ /da/, སྦ /ba/
• When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position with the nasal consonants ང /ŋa/, ཉ /ɲa/, ན /na/ and མ /ma/, they receive a high tone in Lhasa Tibetan, for example:
  • རྔ /ŋa/, རྙ /ɲa/, རྣ /na/, རྨ /ma/
  • ལྔ /ŋa/
  • སྔ /ŋa/, སྙ /ɲa/, སྣ /na/, སྨ /ma/
• When ལ /la/ is in superscript position with ཧ /ha/, it becomes a voiceless alveolar lateral approximant in Lhasa Tibetan:
  • ལྷ /l̥a/,

Sub-joined letters

The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/. In this position they are described as བཏགས (Wylie: btags, IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example བ་ཡ་བཏགས་བྱ (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for ཝ, 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 ཀ་ཝ་ཟུར་ཀྭ (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/).

Vowel marks

The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/, ཀི /ki/, ཀུ /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels ཨི /i/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while the vowel ཨུ /u/ is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan 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 loanwords, especially transcribed from the Sanskrit.

Numerical digits

Punctuation marks

Extended use

A text in Tibetan script suspected to be Sanskrit in content. From the personal artifact collection of Donald Weir.

The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti, Chinese and Sanskrit, often has additional and/or modified graphemes taken from the basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds.

Extended alphabet

• In Balti, consonants ka, ra are represented by reversing the letters ཀ ར (ka, ra) to give ཫ ཬ (qa, ɽa).
• The Sanskrit retroflex consonants ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ṇa, ṣa are represented in Tibetan by reversing the letters ཏ ཐ ད ན ཤ (ta, tha, da, na, sha) to give ཊ ཋ ཌ ཎ ཥ (ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ṇa, ṣa).
• It is a classical rule to transliterate Sanskrit ca, cha, ja, jha, to Tibetan ཙ ཚ ཛ ཛྷ (tsa, tsha, dza, dzha), respectively. Nowadays, ཅ ཆ ཇ ཇྷ (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. Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the Wylie transliteration system is widely used to Romanize Standard Tibetan, 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), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A) and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL).

Input method and keyboard layout

Tibetan

Tibetan keyboard layout

The first version of Microsoft Windows to support the Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista. The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007. In Ubuntu 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-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

Dzongkha keyboard layout

The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000.

It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 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.

Unicode

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

See also

• Tibetan calligraphy
• Tibetan Braille
• Dzongkha Braille
• Tibetan typefaces
• Wylie transliteration
• Tibetan pinyin
• Roman Dzongkha
• THDL Simplified Phonetic Transcription
• Tise, input method for Tibetan script
• Limbu script