Tibetan alphabet

"࿊" redirects here. For other uses, see Yin and yang.
Tibetan
Type
Languages Tibetan, Dzongkha, Ladakhi, Sikkimese, Balti, Tamang, Sherpa, Yolmo, Tshangla, Gurung
Time period
 c. 650–present
Parent systems
Child systems
 Limbu, Lepcha, 'Phags-pa
Sister systems
 Bengali, Assamese
Direction Left-to-right
ISO 15924 Tibt, 330
Unicode alias
 Tibetan
U+0F00–U+0FFF
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.

The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida used to write the Tibetic languages such as Tibetan, as well as Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, and sometimes Balti. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script.

The alphabet is very closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in Tibet, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.[1] The Tibetan alphabet is of Indic origin and it is ancestral to the Limbu alphabet, the Lepcha alphabet,[2] and the multilingual 'Phags-pa script.[2]

History

The creation of the Tibetan alphabet is attributed to Thonmi Sambhota of the mid-7th century. 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 alphabet. The form of the letters is based on an Indic alphabet of that period.[3]

Three orthographic standardizations 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 altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, 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. In contrast, the pronunciation of the Balti, Ladakhi and Burig languages adheres more closely to the archaic spelling.

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.[2] As in other Indic scripts, each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel, in the Tibetan script it's ཨ /a/. The alphabet ཨ /a/ is also the base for dependent vowels 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.

Unaspirated
high		 Aspirated
medium		 Voiced
low		 Nasal
low
Alphabet IPA Alphabet IPA Alphabet IPA Alphabet IPA
Guttural ཀ /ka/ ཁ /kʰa/ ག /ga/ ང /ŋa/
Palatal ཅ /tʃa/ ཆ /tʃʰa/ ཇ /dʒa/ ཉ /ɲa/
Dental ཏ /ta/ ཐ /tʰa/ ད /da/ ན /na/
Labial པ /pa/ ཕ /pʰa/ བ /ba/ མ /ma/
Dental ཙ /tsa/ ཚ /tsʰa/ ཛ /dza/ ཝ /wa/
low ཞ /ʒa/ ཟ /za/ འ /'a/ ཡ /ja/
medium ར /ɲa/ ལ /la/ ཤ /ʃa/ ས /sa/
high ཧ /ha/ ཨ /a/

Consonant clusters

The unique 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/. 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.[2] ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants; thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /rnya/. Similarly, the consonants ཝ /wa/, ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants; thus ཀྭ /kwa/; ཀྲ /kra/; ཀྱ /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 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/.[2]

Head letters

The superscript position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/.

Sub-joined letters

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

Vowel marks and Numerals

The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel is included in each consonant or radical, 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.[2] 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.

Vowel mark IPA Vowel mark IPA Vowel mark IPA Vowel mark IPA
ི /i/ ུ /u/ ེ /e/ ོ /o/
Tibetan Numerals ༠ ༡ ༢ ༣ ༤ ༥ ༦ ༧ ༨ ༩
Arabic Numerals 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Modifiers
Symbol/
Graphemes 		Name Function
༄ ཡིག་མགོ་
yig mgo 		marks beginning of text
༈
sbrul shad 		separates sections of meaning equivalent to topics and sub-topics
༉
bskur yig mgo 		list enumerator (Dzongkha)
་
tsek 		morpheme delimiter
།
tshig-grub 		full stop (marks end of a section of text)
༎
don-tshan 		full stop (marks end of a whole topic)
༴
bsdus rtags 		repetition
༺
gug rtags gyon		 left bracket
༻
gug rtags gyas 		right bracket
༼
ang khang gyon 		left bracket used for bracketing with a roof over
༽
ang khang gyas 		right bracket used for bracketing with a roof over

Extended use

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

Extended alphabet
Alphabet Used in Romanization & IPA
ཫ Balti ka /ka/
ཬ Balti ra /ɲa/
གྷ Sanskrit gha /ɡʱ/
ཛྷ Sanskrit jha /ɟʱ, d͡ʒʱ/
ཊ Sanskrit ṭa /ʈ/
ཋ Sanskrit ṭha /ʈʰ/
ཌ Sanskrit ḍa /ɖ/
ཌྷ Sanskrit ḍha /ɖʱ/
ཎ Sanskrit ṇa /ɳ/
དྷ Sanskrit dha /d̪ʱ/
བྷ Sanskrit bha /bʱ/
ཥ Sanskrit ṣa /ʂ/
ཀྵ Sanskrit kṣa /kʂ/

Extended vowel marks and modifiers
Vowel Mark Used in Romanization & IPA
ཱ Sanskrit ā /ā/
ཱི Sanskrit ī /ī/
ཱུ Sanskrit ū /ū/
ཻ Sanskrit ai /ai/
ཽ Sanskrit au /au/
ྲྀ Sanskrit ṛ /ṛi/
ཷ Sanskrit ṝ /ṛī/
ླྀ Sanskrit ḷ /ḷi/
ཹ Sanskrit ḹ /ḷī/
ཾ Sanskrit aṃ /ṃ/
ྃ Sanskrit aṃ /ṃ/
ཿ Sanskrit aḥ /ḥ/
Symbol/
Graphemes 		Name Used in Function
྄ srog med Sanskrit suppresses the inherent vowel sound
྅ paluta Sanskrit used for prolonging vowel sounds

Romanization and transliteration

Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in the Latin script. There are various ways of Romanization and transliteration systems created in recent years, but failed to represent the true phonetic sound.[4] 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 alphabets and different Romanization and transliteration system for each alphabet, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A)[5] and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL).

Alphabet W TP DP A THL Alphabet W TP DP A THL Alphabet W TP DP A THL Alphabet W TP DP A THL
ཀ ka g ka ka ka ཁ kha k kha kha kha ག ga k kha ga ga ང nga ng nga nga nga
ཅ ca j ca ca cha ཆ cha q cha cha cha ཇ ja q cha ja ja ཉ nya ny nya nya nya
ཏ ta d ta ta ta ཐ tha t tha tha ta ད da t tha da da ན na n na na na
པ pa b pa pa pa ཕ pha p pha pha pa བ ba p pha ba ba མ ma m ma ma ma
ཙ tsa z tsa tsa tsa ཚ tsha c tsha tsha tsa ཛ dza c tsha dza dza ཝ wa w wa wa wa
ཞ zha x sha zha zha ཟ za s sa za za འ 'a - a 'a a ཡ ya y ya ya ya
ར ra r ra ra ra ལ la l la la la ཤ sha x sha sha sha ས sa s sa sa sa
ཧ ha h ha ha ha ཨ a a a a a

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 the XFree86 distribution.

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:

Tibetan[1][2][3]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+0F0x ༀ ༁ ༂ ༃ ༄ ༅ ༆ ༇ ༈ ༉ ༊ ་ ༌
 NB 		 ། ༎ ༏
U+0F1x ༐ ༑ ༒ ༓ ༔ ༕ ༖ ༗ ༘ ༙ ༚ ༛ ༜ ༝ ༞ ༟
U+0F2x ༠ ༡ ༢ ༣ ༤ ༥ ༦ ༧ ༨ ༩ ༪ ༫ ༬ ༭ ༮ ༯
U+0F3x ༰ ༱ ༲ ༳ ༴ ༵ ༶ ༷ ༸ ༹ ༺ ༻ ༼ ༽ ༾ ༿
U+0F4x ཀ ཁ ག གྷ ང ཅ ཆ ཇ ཉ ཊ ཋ ཌ ཌྷ ཎ ཏ
U+0F5x ཐ ད དྷ ན པ ཕ བ བྷ མ ཙ ཚ ཛ ཛྷ ཝ ཞ ཟ
U+0F6x འ ཡ ར ལ ཤ ཥ ས ཧ ཨ ཀྵ ཪ ཫ ཬ
U+0F7x ཱ ི ཱི ུ ཱུ ྲྀ ཷ ླྀ ཹ ེ ཻ ོ ཽ ཾ ཿ
U+0F8x ྀ ཱྀ ྂ ྃ ྄ ྅ ྆ ྇ ྈ ྉ ྊ ྋ ྌ ྍ ྎ ྏ
U+0F9x ྐ ྑ ྒ ྒྷ ྔ ྕ ྖ ྗ ྙ ྚ ྛ ྜ ྜྷ ྞ ྟ
U+0FAx ྠ ྡ ྡྷ ྣ ྤ ྥ ྦ ྦྷ ྨ ྩ ྪ ྫ ྫྷ ྭ ྮ ྯ
U+0FBx ྰ ྱ ྲ ླ ྴ ྵ ྶ ྷ ྸ ྐྵ ྺ ྻ ྼ ྾ ྿
U+0FCx ࿀ ࿁ ࿂ ࿃ ࿄ ࿅ ࿆ ࿇ ࿈ ࿉ ࿊ ࿋ ࿌ ࿎ ࿏
U+0FDx ࿐ ࿑ ࿒ ࿓ ࿔ ࿕ ࿖ ࿗ ࿘ ࿙ ࿚
U+0FEx
U+0FFx
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 9.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
3.^ Unicode code points U+0F77 and U+0F79 are deprecated in Unicode 5.2 and later

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Chamberlain 2008
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. The World’s Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  3. ↑ Which specific Indic script inspired the Tibetan alphabet remains controversial. Recent study suggests Tibetan script was based on an adaption from Khotan of the Indian Brahmi and Gupta scripts taught to Thonmi Sambhota in Kashmir (Berzin, Alexander. A Survey of Tibetan History - Reading Notes Taken by Alexander Berzin from Tsepon, W. D. Shakabpa, Tibet: A Political History. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967: http://studybuddhism.com/web/en/archives/e-books/unpublished_manuscripts/survey_tibetan_history/chapter_1.html).
  4. ↑ See for instance
  5. ↑ [http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/tibetan.pdf ALA-LC Romanization of Tibetan script (PDF)

References

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