Tibetan Script: History Description
Tibetan Script: History Description
Tibetan Script: History Description
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (abugida) of Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic
languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. It has also been used for some Tibetan
non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali.[5] 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.[6] The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as
Meitei,[3] Lepcha,[7] Marchen and the multilingual ʼPhags-pa script.[7] The mantra "Om mani padme hum"
Unicode Lepcha
Notes ʼPhags-pa
Marchen
References
Citations Sister Sharada, Siddhaṃ
Sources systems
ISO 15924
External links
ISO 15924 Tibt (330), Tibetan
Unicode
History Unicode Tibetan
alias
According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was introduced by Thonmi Sambhota in the first half of
Unicode U+0F00–U+0FFF (https://ww
the 7th century, mainly for the codification of the sacred Buddhist texts.[8][9] From a contemporary academic
range w.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0
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).[10] New research and writings suggest that there were one or more Tibetan F00.pdf)
scripts in use prior to the introduction of the current script by Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota. The Final Accepted Script Proposal
Tunhong manuscripts are key evidence for this hypothesis.[11] of the First Usable Edition
(3.0) (http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/s
Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to c2/wg2/docs/n2022.pdf)
facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures, emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has [a]
not altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts
clusters. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa, there is a is debated; see Brahmi script § Origins for
great divergence between current spelling (which still reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan) and current more information.
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 Ladakhi, as well as Balti, come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings.[10] But the grammar of these
varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the classical orthography and grammar of Classical Tibetan would be the same as
to write Italian according to that of Latin, or to write Hindi according to that of Sanskrit.[10] 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. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where the Buddhist elites initiated a spelling reform.[10] A spelling reform in Ladakhi
was so controversial, however, partly because it was first initiated by Christian missionaries.[10]
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.[7] 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.
Unaspirated
Aspirated Voiced
Nasal
a. These voiced values are historical. They have been devoiced in modern Standard Tibetan.
Consonant clusters
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/. 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.[7] ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants; thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to
this is the cluster རྙ /rɲa/. 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 /ʰka/, ད /ʰta/, བ /ʰpa/, 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 /ʰka/, ན /na/, བ /ʰpa/, ད /ʰta/, 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 /ʰta/ and ས /sa/.[7]
Head letters
The 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 /tʃa/, ཏ /ta/, པ /pa/ and ཙ /tsa/,
there are no changes in the sound in Central Lhasa Tibetan. In that language,they look and sound like:
སྐ /ka/, སྕ /tʃa/, སྟ /ta/, སྤ /pa/, སྩ /tsa/ Tibetan map of the Kizil Caves,
Tarim Basin. 13th century CE
When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position with ག /ʰka/, ཇ /ʰtʃa/, ད /ʰta/, བ /ʰpa/ and ཛ /
ʰtsa/, they lose their aspiration and become voiced in Central Lhasa Tibetan. In that language,they look and sound like:
When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position with ང /ŋa/, ཉ /ɲa/, ན /na/ and མ /ma/, the nasal sound gets high in Central Lhasa
ལྔ /ŋa/, ལྨ /ma/
Sub-joined letters
The subscript position under a radical is for the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/.
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 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. Old Tibetan included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction
[7]
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
Numerical digits
Tibetan numerals ༠ ༡ ༢ ༣ ༤ ༥ ༦ ༧ ༨ ༩
Devanagari numerals ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९
Arabic numerals 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Tibetan fractions ༳ ༪ ༫ ༬ ༭ ༮ ༯ ༰ ༱ ༲
Arabic fractions -0.5 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.5 7.5 8.5
Punctuation marks
Symbol/
Name Function
Graphemes
༄ ཡི ག་མགོ ་
༈ སྦྲུལ་ཤད་
༉ བསྐུར་ཡི ག་མགོ ་
་ ཚེ ག་
morpheme delimiter
tseg
། ཚི ག་གྲུབ་
full stop (marks end of a section of text)
tshig-grub
༎ དོ ན་ཚན་
༴ བསྡུས་རྟགས་
repetition
bsdus rtags
༺ གུག་རྟགས་གཡོ ན་
left bracket
gug rtags g.yon
༻ གུག་རྟགས་གཡས་
right bracket
gug rtags g.yas
༼ ཨང་ཁང་གཡོ ན་
༽ ཨང་ཁང་གཡས་
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
Letter Used in Romanization & IPA
ཊ Sanskrit ṭa /ʈ/
ཎ Sanskrit ṇa /ɳ/
ཥ Sanskrit ṣa /ʂ/
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
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,
ཱ Sanskrit ā /aː/
ཱི Sanskrit ī /iː/
ཱུ Sanskrit ū /uː/
ཻ Sanskrit ai /ai/
ཽ Sanskrit au /au/
ྲྀ Sanskrit ṛ /r̩/
ཷ Sanskrit ṝ /r̩ː/
ླྀ Sanskrit ḷ /l̩/
ཹ Sanskrit ḹ /l̩ː/
ཾ Sanskrit aṃ /◌̃/
ྃ Sanskrit aṃ /◌̃/
ཿ Sanskrit aḥ /h/
Symbol/
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)[13] and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL).
Letter W TP DP A THL Letter W TP DP A THL Letter W TP DP A THL Letter 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
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
ཧ ha h ha ha ha ཨ a a a a a
* – Only in loanwords
Tibetan
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 Tibetan keyboard layout
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 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.
Dzongkha keyboard layout
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:
Tibetan[1][2][3]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0F00.pdf) (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
See also
Tibetan calligraphy
Tibetan Braille
Dzongkha Braille
Tibetan typefaces
Wylie transliteration
Tibetan pinyin
THDL Simplified Phonetic Transcription
Tise, input method for Tibetan script
Limbu script
Notes
1. See for instance [1] (http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_bo.pdf) [2] (http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom2_dz.pdf)
References
Citations
1. Daniels, P.T. (January 2008). "Writing systems of major and minor 9. Berzin, Alexander. A Survey of Tibetan History - Reading Notes
languages". Taken by Alexander Berzin from Tsepon, W. D. Shakabpa, Tibet: A
2. Masica, Colin (1993). The Indo-Aryan languages. p. 143. Political History. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967:
3. Chelliah, Shobhana Lakshmi (2011). A Grammar of Meithei (http http://studybuddhism.com/web/en/archives/e-
s://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Grammar_of_Meithei/noCHV books/unpublished_manuscripts/survey_tibetan_history/chapter_1.h
vu0P8oC?hl=en&gbpv=0). De Gruyter. p. 355. 10. Zeisler, Bettina (2006). "Why Ladakhi must not be written – Being
ISBN 9783110801118. "Meithei Mayek is part of the Tibetan group part of the Great Tradition Another kind of global thinking". In Anju
of scripts,which originated from the Gupta Brahmi script" Saxena; Lars Borin (eds.). Lesser-Known Languages of South
Asia. p. 178.
4. Singh, Harimohon Thounaojam (January 2011), The Evolution
and Recent Development of the Meetei Mayek Script (https://www.r 11. Phuntsok, Thubten. བོ ད་ཀྱི ་ལོ ་རྒྱུས་སྤྱི ་དོ ན་པདྨ་ར་གཱའི ་ལྡེ ་མི ག "A General
esearchgate.net/publication/263852161), Cambridge University History of Tibet".
Press India, p. 28 12. Hill, Nathan W. (2005b). "Once more on the letter འ" (http://eprints.s
oas.ac.uk/5632/1/once_more_on_the_letter.pdf) (PDF). Linguistics
5. http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/kailash/pdf/kailash_09_01_02.pdf
6. Chamberlain 2008 of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 28 (2): 111–141.; Hill, Nathan W.
(2009). "Tibetan <ḥ-> as a plain initial and its place in Old Tibetan
7. Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. The World's Writing Systems. phonology" (http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/7625/1/04-Hill-Dialect-reflexe
New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. s-of-Tib-v.pdf) (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 32 (1):
8. William Woodville Rockhill, Annual Report of the Board of 115–140.
Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (https://books.google.com/b 13. ALA-LC Romanization of Tibetan script (PDF) (https://www.loc.go
ooks?id=avFDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA671), p. 671, at Google Books, v/catdir/cpso/romanization/tibetan.pdf)
United States National Museum, page 671
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 (https://www.academia.edu/2322359/A_new_transcripti
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Jäschke, Heinrich August. (1989). Tibetan Grammar. Corrected by Sunil Gupta. Reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru.
External links
Tibetan Calligraphy (https://sites.google.com/site/chrisfynn2/home/tibetanscriptfonts/howtowritethetibetanscript) Archived (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20130128174741/https://sites.google.com/site/chrisfynn2/home/tibetanscriptfonts/howtowritethetibetanscript) 2013-01-28 at the
Wayback Machine—Online guide for writing Tibetan script.
Elements of the Tibetan writing system (https://sites.google.com/view/chrisfynn/home/tibetanscriptfonts/thetibetanwritingsystem).
Unicode area U0F00-U0FFF, Tibetan script (162KB) (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0F00.pdf)
Encoding Model of the Tibetan Script in the UCS (http://www.thlib.org/tools/#wiki=/access/wiki/site/26a34146-33a6-48ce-001e-f16ce7908a
6a/encoding%20model%20of%20the%20tibetan%20script%20in%20the%20ucs.html)
Digital Tibetan (http://www.digitaltibetan.org/index.php/Digital_Tibetan) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20170710141837/http://digital
tibetan.org/index.php/Digital_Tibetan) 2017-07-10 at the Wayback Machine—Online resource for the digitalization of Tibetan.
Tibetan Scripts, Fonts & Related Issues (http://www.thlib.org/tools/#wiki=/access/wiki/site/26a34146-33a6-48ce-001e-f16ce7908a6a/home.
html)—THDL articles on Unicode font issues; free cross-platform OpenType fonts—Unicode compatible.
Free Tibetan Fonts Project (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/free-tibetan/)
Ancient Scripts: Tibetan (http://www.ancientscripts.com/tibetan.html)