Tibetic languages

Tibetan
Tibetan
བོད་སྐད་ bod skad
Native to	China, India, Pakistan
Region	Tibet, Kashmir, Baltistan
Native speakers	6,150,000
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Himalayish Tibeto-Kanauri Tibetan; ; ; ;
Official status
Official language in	Tibet Autonomous Region (PRC)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	bo
ISO 639-2	tib (B) ; bod (T)
ISO 639-3	Variously:; bod – Central Tibetan; adx – Amdo Tibetan; khg – Khams Tibetan

TheTibetan language is spoken primarily by the Tibetan people who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering South Asia, as well as by large number of Tibetan refugees all over the world. Several forms of Tibetan are also spoken by various peoples of northern Pakistan and India in areas like Baltistan and Ladakh, which are both in or around Kashmir. Its classical written form is a major regional literary language, particularly in its use as in Buddhist writings.

Tibetan is typically classified as a Tibeto-Burman language which in turn is, according to the most widespread theory, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Spoken Tibetan includes numerous regional varieties which, in many cases, are not mutually intelligible. Moreover, the boundaries between Tibetan and certain other Himalayan languages are sometimes unclear. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo, and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects, while other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered closely-related but separate languages. In practice, however, as with all languages, what is considered a separate language and not a dialect is not clear. The Balti language of Baltistan, a region in Pakistan that is administered as part of Pakistan's "Northern Areas," is just one example of a form of the Tibetan language that may be considered either a dialect or a separate language . Nicknamed "Little Tibet" by Central Asian conquerors who arrived in the Indian subcontinent and began the Moghul era, Baltistan houses what is considered an 18th century classical or archaic form of the Tibetan language. Many of the consonants that are silent in most modern Tibetan dialects are pronounced in Balti. Pakistani-held Baltistan and Indian-held Ladakh form a western extension of the Plateau of Tibet. Ultimately, taking into consideration this wider understanding of Tibetan dialects and forms, what we might call "greater Tibetan" is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan is also spoken by approximately 150,000 exile speakers who have moved from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries.

Although Classical Tibetan apparently was not a tonal language, some dialects have developed tones. This is particularly true in the Central and Kham dialects, while the Amdo dialect and some in the west remain without tones. Tibetan morphology can generally be described as agglutinative.

Dialects

Tibetan is comprised of several dialect groups. Within Tibet Autonomous Region, China, the dominant dialects are as follows; these are also used prevalently in overseas linguistic and ethnographic studies and broadcasting:

Lhasa/Ü-Tsang: based on the Lhasa standard (capital of Tibet AR), it is used as a lingua franca throughout Ü-Tsang; the Tibetan overseas dialect is also based largely on it.
Kham
Amdo

The following is a dialect chart:[1]

Western Archaic Tibetan: Balti dialects (Pakistan, India), Purik dialects (India), Ladakhi dialects (India)

Western Innovative Tibetan: Ladakhi dialects of Upper Ladakh and Zanskar (India), North West Indian Border Area dialects: Lahul, Spiti, Uttarakhand (India), Ngari dialects: Tholing (Tibet AR, China: Ngari Area)

Central Tibetan: Ngari dialects (Tibet AR, China: Ngari Area), Northern Nepalese Border Area dialects (Nepal), Tsang dialects (Tibet AR, China: Shigatse Area), Ü dialects (Tibet AR, China: Lhoka Area, Lhasa municipality)

Northern Tibetan: Ngari dialects (Gertse), dialects of Nakchu Area (Tibet AR, China), dialects of Southern Qinghai Province, China (Nangchen)

Southern Tibetan: dialects of Sikkim (India), Tsang dialects (Tromowa valley), dialects of Bhutan

Eastern Kham Tibetan: Kham dialects of Qinghai Province, Kham dialects of Chamdo Area (Tibet AR, China), Kham dialects of Sichuan Province, China, Kham dialects of Yunnan Province, China

Eastern Amdo Tibetan: Amdo dialects of Qinghai Province, Amdo dialects of Gansu Province, China, Amdo dialects of Sichuan Province

Nouns

The classical written language has nine cases: the absolutive (unmarked morphologically), the genitive (-gi, -gyi, -kyi, -'i, -yi), the ergative/instrumental (-gis, -gyis, -kyis, -'is, -yis), the locative (-na), allative (-la), terminative ( -ru, -su, -tu, -du, -r), comitative (-dang), the ablative (-nas), and the elative (-las). Case morphology is affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words.

Nominalizing suffixes — pa or ba and ma — are required by the noun (substantive or adjective) that is to be singled out;

po or bo (masculine) and mo (feminine) are used for distinction of gender or for emphasis.

The plural is denoted when required by adding the morpheme (-rnams), when the collective nature of the plurality is stressed the morpheme (-dag) is instead used. These two morphemes combine readily (i.e. rnams-dag 'a group with several members', and dag-rnams 'several groups'). When several words are connected in a sentence they seldom require more than one case element, and that comes last.

There are personal, demonstrative, interrogative and reflexive pronouns, as well as an indefinite article, which is plainly related to the numeral for "one."

Verbs

Verbs do not inflect for person or number. Morphologically there are up to four separate stem forms called by the Tibetan grammarians, influenced by Sanskrit grammatical terminology, present (lta-da), past ('das-pa), future (ma-'ongs-pa), and imperative (skul-tshigs), although the precise semantics of these stems is still controversial. The so-called future stem is not a true future, but conveys the sense of necessity or obligation.

The majority of Tibetan verbs fall into one of two categories, those which express implicitly or explicitly the involvement of an agent, marked in a sentence by the instrumental particle (kyis etc) and those expressing an action which does not involve an agent. Tibetan grammarians refer to these categories as tha-dad-pa and tha-mi-dad-pa respectively. Although these two categories often seem to overlap with the English grammatical concepts of transitive and intransitive, most modern writers on Tibetan grammar have adopted the terms "voluntary" and "involuntary", based on native Tibetan descriptions. Most involuntary verbs lack an imperative stem.

Many verbs exhibit stem ablaut among the four stem forms, thus a or e in the present tends to become o in the imperative byed, byas, bya, byos 'to do'), an e in the present changes to a in the past and future (len, blangs, blang, longs 'to take'); in some verbs a present in i changes to u in the other stems ('dzin, bzung, gzung, zung 'to take'). Additionally, the stems of verbs are also distinguished by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes,thus sgrub (present) bsgrubs (past), bsgrub (future) sgrubs (imperative). Though the final -s suffix, when used, is quite regular for the past and imperative, the apecific prefixes to be used with any given verb are less predictable, though there is a clear pattern of b- for a past stem and g- for a future stem, but this usage is not consistent.

Only a limited number of verbs are capable of four changes; some cannot assume more than three, some two, and many only one. This relative deficiency is made up by the addition of auxiliaries or suffixes both in the classical language and in the modern dialects.

Verbs are negated by two prepositional particles: mi and ma. Mi is used with present and future stems. The particle ma is used with the past stem, and with the imperative in Classical Tibetan, although in modern Tibetan, prohibitions do not employ the imperative stem, rather the present stem is negated with ma due to the collapse of the four part verbal system in many cases. There is also a negative stative verb med 'there is not, there does not exist', the counterpart to the stative verb yod 'there is, there exists'

As with nouns, Tibetan also has a complex system of honorific and polite verbal forms, paralleling that found in Japanese. Thus, many verbs for everday actions have a completely different form to express the superior status, whether actual or out of courtesy, of the agent of the action, thus lta 'see', hon. gzigs; byed 'do', hon. mdzad. Where a specific honorific verb stem does not exist, the same effect is brought about by compounding a standard verbal stem with an appropriate general honorific stem such as mdzad.

Numerals

There are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting, as in many languages of East Asia, though words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.

In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.

Writing system

Tibetan is written with an Indic script, although some inhabitants in the Ladakh area write it phonetically with Urdu script, based originally on the Arabic-Persian script. The Urdu or Arabic-Persian script used in parts of Ladakh is also used among Baltis in Pakistani Baltistan after the Tibetan script fell out of use hundreds of years ago upon the region's adoption of Islam. However, the increased concern among Pakistani Baltis for the preservation of their unique local language and traditions, especially in the face of strong Panjabi cultural influence throughout Pakistan, has fostered renewed interest among some Baltis in reviving Tibetan script and using it side by side with the Arabic-Persian script. Many shops in Baltistan's capital Skardu in Pakistan's "Northern Areas" region have begun supplementing signs written in the Arabic-Persian script with signs written in Tibetan script. Baltis see this initiative not as separatist but rather as part of an attempt to preserve the unique cultural aspects of their region which has shared a close history with neighbors like Kashmiris and Panjabis since the arrival of Islam in the region many centuries ago.

Wylie transliteration is the most common system of romanization used by Western scholars in rendering written Tibetan using the Latin alphabet (such as employed on much of this page).

Among the initials, five — ག g, ད d, བ b, མ m, འ ' — are regarded as prefixes, and are called so for all purposes, though they belong sometimes to the stem. As a rule, none of these letters can be placed before any of the same organic class. The language is much ruled by laws of euphony, which have been strictly formulated by native grammarians.

Phonological history

The concurrence of the evidence indicated above enables us to form the following outline of the evolution of Tibetan. In the 9th century, as shown by the bilingual Tibeto-Chinese treaty of 821–822 found in front of Lhasa's Jokhang, the complex initial clusters had already been reduced, and the process of tonogenesis was likely well underway.

The next change took place in Tsang (Gtsang) dialects: The ra-tags were altered into cerebral dentals, and the ya-tags became palatals.

Later on the superscribed letters and finals d and s disappeared, except in the east and west. It was at this stage that the language spread in Lahul and Spiti, where the superscribed letters were silent, the d and g finals were hardly heard, and as, os, us were ai, oi, ui. The words introduced from Tibet into the border languages at that time differ greatly from those introduced at an earlier period.

The other changes are more recent and restricted to Ü and Tsang. The vowel sounds ai, oi, ui have become ë, ã, iZ; and a, o, u before the finals d and n are now a, ö, ü. The medials have become aspirate tenues with a low intonation, which also marks the words having a simple initial consonant; while the former aspirates and the complex initials simplified in speech are uttered with a high tone, shrill and rapidly. An inhabitant of Lhasa, for example, finds the distinction between s and z, or between s and z, not in the consonant, but in the tone, pronouncing s and s with a high note and l and l with a low one.

External links

Books

Manual of Standard Tibetan, Nicolas Tournadre and Sangda Dorje, Snow Lion 2003, ISBN 1-55939-189-8.
Tibetan-English Dictionary (With Sanskrit Synonyms), Sarat Chandra Das, Motilal Banarsidass 2000, ISBN 81-208-1713-3.
An Introduction to Classical Tibetan, Stephen Hodge, Orchid Press 2003, ISBN 974-524-039-7

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)