One feature of Tibetan language is that there are many single alphabet becomes a word eg ཁ་ (kha) Mouth ང་། (nga) Me ཆ་ (Cha) Pair ཇ་ (Ja) Tea ཉ་ (nya) Fish ད་ (Dha) Now ཕ་ (Pha) Father བ་ (Bha) Cattle མ་ (Ma) Mother ཟ་ (Za) Eat ལ་ (La) Passes (Mountain passes) ཤ་ (Sha) Meat ས་ (Sa) Earth, Ground, Land
@@Ldy755 im not living in pakistan, am tibetan tho and as far as i know there definitely are tibetans on the border to china but the ones living there usually are the minority of muslim tibetans
@@Ldy755 Yes, the Baltistan region where people do speak Balti Language which is a Tibetan language. The script has changed to Nastaʼlīq from Tibetan script.
Check out our Tibetan Language Institute website at www.tibetanlanguage.org . There are a lot of free pdfs to print out, helpful links for self-paced study, and more. Also many videos at my TH-cam channel: Tibetan words explained word-by-word--Refuge & Bodhicitta Prayer, Dedication Prayer, verses from the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, and much more.
Tibetan script was made during the 7AD from Brahmi script used in North India. Though Tibetan script and grammar is closely related to Sanskrit but the Tibetan language is not related to Indian language. Influence of Buddhism has lead to structuring Tibetan literature based on the Panini. Many words are borrowed from Sanskrit. A Tibetan with a sufficient knowledge of Tibetan literature will understand whether it is original Tibetan word or borrowed one based on how it is written.
The previous comment by Lobsang Tenje about pronunciation misses the point. Ninety percent of the Tibetan Buddhist canon is not translated into English; therefore, learning to READ Tibetan is of primary importance. Conversational Tibetan is not the aim. Additionally, of the translated material available, Dharma students find themselves at the mercy of the translator's opinions, judgments and cultural understanding, both his or her own, as well as that which is being interpreted.
I know from listening to other Tibetans that you're right, but it's REALLY hard for most English speakers to pronounce (and even hear) aspirated consonants because they don't form contrasting phoneme pairs in English. (i.e. "top" is aspirated T and "stop" is not; but there is no "top" vs. "t(h)op", so we never had to learn to hear or say the difference). So if this guy doesn't over-pronounce the second column, I would have a hard time even hearing any different at all.
i want to say with firm confidence and with long research,that the Tibetan as a writing is predominantly extracted from Sanskrit though modified so as to emerge itself variant. Yet the phonetics when we speak,the spoken language is different to every other languages apart from the ancient middle Chinese. So is the case of cultural exchanges with the Chinese empires,that many loan words from the middle Chinese is frequently observed. For example, "tsong" (onion) in Tibetan as "cong","chokze"(table) is "zhouze" that is pronounced as "trokze","chuu"(water) is "shui" and likewise the numerals are very similar. Though we don't write the characters as middle Chinese, the phonetics is closely related.
tenzin lekphel yashotsang Hi,just to clarify,"table" in Mandarin is "zhuozi" (桌子)not "zhouze".Interestingly,I have no problems with Chinese pronunciation,but the Tibetan sounds are really difficult for me to distinguish....hopefully,one day I'll improve:)
Replying after 2 years! I guess it is Indian name. But i haven't come across such Indian name before. How the t sounds in the surname? Is it like t in table or t in Tamilnadu? Also it is not clear that double 't" in the surname should be pronounced or it is there for numerogical reason only. Without knowing how to pronounce, i may write your name wrongly. Also, Tibetans don't write first and last name separately as in English and Hindi as in Rishi Kapoor. We write names in one block: This is my friend's name: བྱམས་པ་བསྟན་འཛིན། It is jampa tenzin in Tibetan. You can copy paste the name in MS Word and make the font big to see how it looks.
Lama David's objective is not oral communication in any of the many, many dialects and regional variations of Tibet (one per valley?), but ability to make progress reading literary Tibetan. Lobsang may criticize, but many many Westerners have made enough progress with Lama David to quickly adjust to 3-year retreats conducted entirely in Tibetan. Given the vast support for Tibet generated by activities like David's, maybe Lobsang and his ilk will be less eager to criticize next time.
So in essence, Tibetan is also a tonal language, but has fewer tones and different letters for different tones. A smart way to tackle the tonal issue. If Chinese language and its southern neighbours also approach the tonal issue in this technique, they would have so many letters. But there would still be fewer letters than the number of Chinese characters?
Yes, we teach the Tibetan Alphabet as part of our Level I introductory course, offered several times each year by Zoom webinar. You can find the newest edition of our Level I textbook here: www.tibetanlanguage.org/product/introduction-to-the-tibetan-language-level-i-workbook/ Hope this helps!
@LocaMoca1212 Tibetan. however, due to Chinese immigration into the now occupied Tibet, Mandarin is the lingua franca of the region. By the time you go, you'll need to know Mandarin Chinese, as opposed to Tibetan.
the tibetan script is derived from sanskrit from which the devnagiri script used for hindi is also derived. Therefore it is very similar. the tibetan language existed long before in oral form with the tibetan alphabets developed later with the rise of the tibetan empire.
Beginner here, I have some questions about pronunciation... I have "Fluent Tibetan Fluent Tibetan: A Proficiency Oriented Learning System" And the first and third column sounds sound and look reversed. I.E. ཀ = ga and ག = ka, and the recordings on the tape sound like this as well..... I'm confused. Two questions. Is this just an older way of transcribing the letters? And two, Is ཀ actually closer to "ga" in pronunciation it is generally transcribed as "ka"? help please.
It seems like the low tone (3rd column in each set) is always accompanied by a voicing of the respective phoneme. Why is this? Is it true that in Tibetan there are no short high vocables initiated by voiced consonants and vice versa? Also noticed the same thing with the 2nd column. Is it the case that aspirated consonants must be followed by a "medium" tone and that a "medium" tone vowel can only be initiated by an aspirated consonant?
Yes, it seems that the beginning of your comment is true, low tones seem to only be initiated by voiced consonants, however, I'm not sure where you're getting the medium tone from. He did mention however that it is of medium length, but all 2nd column consonants above the line where of a high tone
Shouldn't 'ར' be pronounced as an alveolar trill [r] in emphatic speech? Or, at least, shouldn't the all-too-American labialized retroflex approximant [ɻʷ] be avoided in favor of the trill [r] or the alveolar approximant [ɹ]?
chinese, tibetan, hmong, and burmese all belong to sino-tibetan language family. Originated in tibet plateau thousands years ago, and then one group migrated to the north east and became han chinese, one group migrated to the south east and became burmese and hmong, and the tibetan today are the people who stay in the motherland. pretty much like the relationship of turkish people and mongolian people
@@bijoydasudiya tibetan and Burmese people adapted scripts from Indian. Chinese in the east created their own scripts. Regardless of the script, the vocal languages of those people belong to the same language family. Even people without any knowledge on linguistics can tell Chinese tibetan and Burmese sound very similar to each other
Hi, great video! I was wondering if anyone can help me... is there a Tibetan word for "happiness" "joy" or "bliss" ?? If anyone knows how to pronounce & write this in Tibetan, please respond! Thank you :-)
Language is not related but mongolian script(phagspa) during kubali kuhan was a script made by a Tibetan monk to write Manchurian, Mongolian, Tibetan and even mandrin i gues . A very versatile script.
@LocaMoca1212 In Tibet, the official language is Tibetan and that is the language principally used in the schools. More people in Tibet can read and write now in the Tibetan language than when the Dalai Lama ruled the country, thanks to the Chinese revolution. Schools for children were almost non-existent 50 years ago and higher education was not encouraged for the common people. Tibet is free now. The Chinese abolished slavery. There even more monasteries in Tibet now than ever.
This is true not just for Tibetans but for Chinese, Indian, Korean, Bhutanese, Germans, Americans, Spanish etc and you name it any country that is the truth not just Tibetan people. Your argument sounds like"In 1970 there was no Iphone in London" there were no Iphone in NYC or Paris or Beijing any any part of the world. Only difference is that there are so many Tibetan educated and not educated who cannot speak Tibetan now because of Tibetan language extermination program under Chinese rule. But during the times of the Dalai Lama there all Tibetans speak Tibetan.
Continued: One needs only recall different versions of the Bible to know that much can be lost in translation. An inquisitive student will find it illuminating to read the original texts. Consider Latin study. What teacher pronounces it correctly? None of them. We don't know how it sounded. No one has suggested Latin scholars quit teaching because of improper pronunciation. That would be nonsense. The same holds true for the previous poster's suggestion. It's nonsense.
Good points, slightly messy pronunciation. I suggest listening to these videos for basic knowledge and then moving to a native Tibetan speaker's pronunciation video.
it's a devnagari script like Sanskrit panjaabi,Bengali,Nepali,Marathi,Gujarati,all are devnagari little bit defference only.devnagari is Hindus script which was invent in pesawar 6000 yrs. ago.
Brahmi script dates back to the 3rd century BC, Nagari to the 1st century AD, and modern Devanagari to c 1000 AD. The earliest writing (Sumerian and Egyptian) is 5100 - 5200 years old.
I am seeing a Westerner teaching Tibetan for the first time. It is funny in good sense. I met a Westerner experienced thangka painter many years ago.
One feature of Tibetan language is that there are many single alphabet becomes a word eg
ཁ་ (kha) Mouth
ང་། (nga) Me
ཆ་ (Cha) Pair
ཇ་ (Ja) Tea
ཉ་ (nya) Fish
ད་ (Dha) Now
ཕ་ (Pha) Father
བ་ (Bha) Cattle
མ་ (Ma) Mother
ཟ་ (Za) Eat
ལ་ (La) Passes (Mountain passes)
ཤ་ (Sha) Meat
ས་ (Sa) Earth, Ground, Land
Wow! kya baat hai. Never thought of this!
Holy crap being Tibetan I never though of it amazing creativity you've got there 👏👏
Omg its our language I never thought balti is written in this way
Love frm pakistan
Found this in youtube today only.Amazing explanation. If I was taught like this ,i would be expert in tibetan.Highly appreciated.
grateful both for this introduction to The Tibetan Alphabet and for the flashcards offered by David Curtis and Tibetan Language Institute.
You are a very good teacher! Thank you so much for making Tibetan easier to learn.
Thu Jay Chay
Tashi dele Professor...You awesome, Namaste
you’re a great teacher! i know this is an old video but I hope you post more tibetan teaching videos! 💞
Greetings! We will be posting more videos in the coming year. Please check out the new website, too! Best regards, Deanna Curtis, TLI Office Manager
@@LamaDavidCurtisWould you please let us know your new website, Thank you
I am tibetian speaker from pakistan but I dont know how to write the tibetian script... Your videos are helpful keep uploading
Are there any Tibetans in Pakistan too?
@@Ldy755 im not living in pakistan, am tibetan tho and as far as i know there definitely are tibetans on the border to china but the ones living there usually are the minority of muslim tibetans
@@Ldy755 Yes, the Baltistan region where people do speak Balti Language which is a Tibetan language. The script has changed to Nastaʼlīq from Tibetan script.
Check out our Tibetan Language Institute website at www.tibetanlanguage.org . There are a lot of free pdfs to print out, helpful links for self-paced study, and more. Also many videos at my TH-cam channel: Tibetan words explained word-by-word--Refuge & Bodhicitta Prayer, Dedication Prayer, verses from the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, and much more.
This is sooo similar to Indian Hindi... I am learning tibetan the old fation way from my Tibetan friends father... I love it... I have bigger plans...
ཨ་ཀུ་རུ་ཏི་པི་ཏི། your name should be like this in tibetan letter.
The Tibetan alphabet or writing system is similar to Devanagri used to write Hindi - but the language itself is very different.
Tibetan script was made during the 7AD from Brahmi script used in North India. Though Tibetan script and grammar is closely related to Sanskrit but the Tibetan language is not related to Indian language. Influence of Buddhism has lead to structuring Tibetan literature based on the Panini. Many words are borrowed from Sanskrit. A Tibetan with a sufficient knowledge of Tibetan literature will understand whether it is original Tibetan word or borrowed one based on how it is written.
Christopher Fynn
He is tibetan so he might know better.
Thank you very much.
Good sir ,from cambodia
thank you from a tibetan for teaching tibetan to foriegners and chinese want to destroy our culture and langauge and even tibetan from tibet
hey who's the guitarist at the end ?? sounds great.
I did like this video, but not the sudden interruption at 7:41.
WOW! THANKS, ❤️🖤💚🤎 FAMILY DAPHNE COTTON ALWAYS 💜,
The previous comment by Lobsang Tenje about pronunciation misses the point. Ninety percent of the Tibetan Buddhist canon is not translated into English; therefore, learning to READ Tibetan is of primary importance. Conversational Tibetan is not the aim. Additionally, of the translated material available, Dharma students find themselves at the mercy of the translator's opinions, judgments and cultural understanding, both his or her own, as well as that which is being interpreted.
I know from listening to other Tibetans that you're right, but it's REALLY hard for most English speakers to pronounce (and even hear) aspirated consonants because they don't form contrasting phoneme pairs in English. (i.e. "top" is aspirated T and "stop" is not; but there is no "top" vs. "t(h)op", so we never had to learn to hear or say the difference). So if this guy doesn't over-pronounce the second column, I would have a hard time even hearing any different at all.
this is great, thank you for sharing this.
Oh My God .......its pronunciation is very similar to HINDI......soft sound.....I love it.
haan G! Did you know that exile tibetans use many hindi words in day to day life? Chappal, joota, pura (all), baarabaaje(lunch.)
DAVID IT IS Paul HI BUD JUST SUBBED AND LIKED AND HIT THE BELL FOR UPDATES
GREAT JOB.... IT WILL HELP TO MANY WHO WISH TO LEARN.
I like Tebetan culture
It's "Tibetan"...
Ngochoavietmamus Ngochoavietmamus
Tebetan?😂😂😂
Thai?
No. Vietnam.
where can i find a free online tibetan translator?
Can someone translate "ba ki sa ba na la da " ? It is written on weapon and I cannot find out what it is.
i want to say with firm confidence and with long research,that the Tibetan as a writing is predominantly extracted from Sanskrit though modified so as to emerge itself variant. Yet the phonetics when we speak,the spoken language is different to every other languages apart from the ancient middle Chinese. So is the case of cultural exchanges with the Chinese empires,that many loan words from the middle Chinese is frequently observed. For example, "tsong" (onion) in Tibetan as "cong","chokze"(table) is "zhouze" that is pronounced as "trokze","chuu"(water) is "shui" and likewise the numerals are very similar. Though we don't write the characters as middle Chinese, the phonetics is closely related.
tenzin lekphel yashotsang Hi,just to clarify,"table" in Mandarin is "zhuozi" (桌子)not "zhouze".Interestingly,I have no problems with Chinese pronunciation,but the Tibetan sounds are really difficult for me to distinguish....hopefully,one day I'll improve:)
Replying after 2 years! I guess it is Indian name. But i haven't come across such Indian name before. How the t sounds in the surname? Is it like t in table or t in Tamilnadu? Also it is not clear that double 't" in the surname should be pronounced or it is there for numerogical reason only. Without knowing how to pronounce, i may write your name wrongly.
Also, Tibetans don't write first and last name separately as in English and Hindi as in Rishi Kapoor. We write names in one block:
This is my friend's name: བྱམས་པ་བསྟན་འཛིན། It is jampa tenzin in Tibetan. You can copy paste the name in MS Word and make the font big to see how it looks.
Thank you so much!!!
I love them. Thank for this class, I hope to learn :)
I think it would be advisable to write the Devenagari equivalent as a substitute to denote the sounds :)
I
Lama David's objective is not oral communication in any of the many, many dialects and regional variations of Tibet (one per valley?), but ability to make progress reading literary Tibetan. Lobsang may criticize, but many many Westerners have made enough progress with Lama David to quickly adjust to 3-year retreats conducted entirely in Tibetan. Given the vast support for Tibet generated by activities like David's, maybe Lobsang and his ilk will be less eager to criticize next time.
བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ།
Everything ends on ah?
3:01 - segunda linha
6:13 - 7° linha
2 primeiras tem tom médio. E as duas últimas tem tom forte
6:22 - 2 últimas letras da 7° linha
So in essence, Tibetan is also a tonal language, but has fewer tones and different letters for different tones. A smart way to tackle the tonal issue. If Chinese language and its southern neighbours also approach the tonal issue in this technique, they would have so many letters. But there would still be fewer letters than the number of Chinese characters?
Is the any book for practicing?
Yes, we teach the Tibetan Alphabet as part of our Level I introductory course, offered several times each year by Zoom webinar. You can find the newest edition of our Level I textbook here: www.tibetanlanguage.org/product/introduction-to-the-tibetan-language-level-i-workbook/
Hope this helps!
Excellent, same way I learned sanskrit.
@LocaMoca1212
Tibetan. however, due to Chinese immigration into the now occupied Tibet, Mandarin is the lingua franca of the region.
By the time you go, you'll need to know Mandarin Chinese, as opposed to Tibetan.
Learned Hindi first, then looking at this, sounds really similar
the tibetan script is derived from sanskrit from which the devnagiri script used for hindi is also derived. Therefore it is very similar. the tibetan language existed long before in oral form with the tibetan alphabets developed later with the rise of the tibetan empire.
Both Tibetan and Hindi came from Sanskrit language.
ཊ=taa, ཌ=dha,ཋ=tha
@@aakruti93 ཨ་ཀྲུ་ཏི པིཏ་ཏི
@@aakruti93 ཨཀ་རུ་ཏི་ པིད་ཏི་
Good job
Seems that the low-toned consonant are all voiced consonants.
What is the difference between 2nd row and 5th?
Beginner here, I have some questions about pronunciation... I have "Fluent Tibetan Fluent Tibetan: A Proficiency Oriented Learning System" And the first and third column sounds sound and look reversed. I.E. ཀ = ga and ག = ka, and the recordings on the tape sound like this as well..... I'm confused. Two questions. Is this just an older way of transcribing the letters? And two, Is ཀ actually closer to "ga" in pronunciation it is generally transcribed as "ka"? help please.
THANKS!
It seems like the low tone (3rd column in each set) is always accompanied by a voicing of the respective phoneme. Why is this? Is it true that in Tibetan there are no short high vocables initiated by voiced consonants and vice versa? Also noticed the same thing with the 2nd column. Is it the case that aspirated consonants must be followed by a "medium" tone and that a "medium" tone vowel can only be initiated by an aspirated consonant?
Yes, it seems that the beginning of your comment is true, low tones seem to only be initiated by voiced consonants, however, I'm not sure where you're getting the medium tone from. He did mention however that it is of medium length, but all 2nd column consonants above the line where of a high tone
Can I ask a question...why r u guys learning the alphabets
thank you :)
A have read very different for the sixth row. Than you.
What about ༄༅།། and flipped letters like ཌ, ྀཊ,ཎ and stacked consonants like ྷད, ྲག , and how to know which consonants to and not to pronounce?
thanks
Shouldn't 'ར' be pronounced as an alveolar trill [r] in emphatic speech? Or, at least, shouldn't the all-too-American labialized retroflex approximant [ɻʷ] be avoided in favor of the trill [r] or the alveolar approximant [ɹ]?
@BestHwanHee Tashi Delek?
There's no schools in Brazil at which one can learn such languages.
Does anyone know how to say "I praise them" In Tibetan? I'm trying to understand sentence structure and direct objects.
ངས་ཁོང་ཚོར་བསྔགས་བརྗོད་ཞུས་ཡིན། hope that this sentence will help you
i can't differentiate za and dza
Tibetan alphabet is read like Karen people in Burma. They sound the same. Amazing!!!
chinese, tibetan, hmong, and burmese all belong to sino-tibetan language family. Originated in tibet plateau thousands years ago, and then one group migrated to the north east and became han chinese, one group migrated to the south east and became burmese and hmong, and the tibetan today are the people who stay in the motherland. pretty much like the relationship of turkish people and mongolian people
@@12823matthewkao But scripts are different. Ideographic of the Putong hua.
@@12823matthewkao not Chinese never.
@@bijoydasudiya tibetan and Burmese people adapted scripts from Indian. Chinese in the east created their own scripts. Regardless of the script, the vocal languages of those people belong to the same language family. Even people without any knowledge on linguistics can tell Chinese tibetan and Burmese sound very similar to each other
Hi, great video! I was wondering if anyone can help me... is there a Tibetan word for "happiness" "joy" or "bliss" ?? If anyone knows how to pronounce & write this in Tibetan, please respond! Thank you :-)
theorium (I think) bliss = བདབ༹
theorium (I think) bliss = བདབ༹
Hi theorium, I think it would be better to say བདེ'སྐྱིད' for happiness and joy
mm-mm. Your tones change and it's confusing ;D But the information is still good enough for me.
@superwax123 same with Nepali, they are all derived from Sanskrit ;D
are tibetan and mongolian related?
They are not. Tibetan is a part of the Sino-Tibetan language family,and Mongolian is a part of the Altaic language family.
Language is not related but mongolian script(phagspa) during kubali kuhan was a script made by a Tibetan monk to write Manchurian, Mongolian, Tibetan and even mandrin i gues . A very versatile script.
hello #DavidCurtis
this guy is really good at explaining...but the only problem is that he doesn't know how to pronounce the 4th letter "nga"...
Tha Zambuling Ghawa Lab Rie,Inze Karpo dumthu bhoyig zang Gue.-----------------Any way great.
Their alphabet is maybe derived in Hindu alphabet because of it's significant stroke
Derived from Sanskrit ....learnt by samboda from nalanda and carried to Tibet....by the order of the king " songtsen gampo"
Most Asian languages have the same pattern
@LocaMoca1212
In Tibet, the official language is Tibetan and that is the language principally used in the schools. More people in Tibet can read and write now in the Tibetan language than when the Dalai Lama ruled the country, thanks to the Chinese revolution. Schools for children were almost non-existent 50 years ago and higher education was not encouraged for the common people. Tibet is free now. The Chinese abolished slavery. There even more monasteries in Tibet now than ever.
Stop that Communist Chinese propaganda.
This is true not just for Tibetans but for Chinese, Indian, Korean, Bhutanese, Germans, Americans, Spanish etc and you name it any country that is the truth not just Tibetan people. Your argument sounds like"In 1970 there was no Iphone in London" there were no Iphone in NYC or Paris or Beijing any any part of the world.
Only difference is that there are so many Tibetan educated and not educated who cannot speak Tibetan now because of Tibetan language extermination program under Chinese rule. But during the times of the Dalai Lama there all Tibetans speak Tibetan.
Third is ga not gha
Continued: One needs only recall different versions of the Bible to know that much can be lost in translation. An inquisitive student will find it illuminating to read the original texts. Consider Latin study. What teacher pronounces it correctly? None of them. We don't know how it sounded. No one has suggested Latin scholars quit teaching because of improper pronunciation. That would be nonsense. The same holds true for the previous poster's suggestion. It's nonsense.
woow its really cool
however there is some mispronounciation eg its gha instead of ga
overall impressive
=)
Good points, slightly messy pronunciation. I suggest listening to these videos for basic knowledge and then moving to a native Tibetan speaker's pronunciation video.
Devnagari script is scientific and useful for computer.Inventer name was Paandini.who was hindu
Sujan sure it is cause Tibetan Language was formed from SANSKRIT except some few alphabets (^_^)
Teaching method is pretty good but pronunciation is totally wrong and incorrect sound .
better stop teaching Tibetan.
Lobsang Tenje can u teach us please
Hey, man, don't say like this. It is his accent. He can't help it! But he is doing a good job. Let's appreciate his work.
Isn't it zhongkha??
Mon Rai The language you are talking about came from Tibetan language. Tibetan came from Sanskrit.
it's a devnagari script like Sanskrit panjaabi,Bengali,Nepali,Marathi,Gujarati,all are devnagari little bit defference only.devnagari is Hindus script which was invent in pesawar 6000 yrs. ago.
Brahmi script dates back to the 3rd century BC, Nagari to the 1st century AD, and modern Devanagari to c 1000 AD. The earliest writing (Sumerian and Egyptian) is 5100 - 5200 years old.
Brahmi as we know today dates back to 3rd century bc
Thank you very much!