Talk:Lhasa Tibetan

Freetibet.org is not a valid source

Deleted the bullshit POV paragraph inserted by a Free Tibet liar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.51.95 (talk) 13:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

merge

There's really no point in creating a separate article for the written language. Why not merge? --Jiang|(Talk)

Most languages with distinct writing systems have them separated (Armenian alphabet, Chinese written language, Hangul, etc). Theoretically it too could be expanded to full article size. --Menchi 08:37, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But is this limited only to the Tibetan language? Armenia alphabet is an alphabet system, like Latin alphabet and Hangul is only a subset of Korean writing, not the entire system. The English language, Spanish language, etc. all cover their written components on the same page. I don't see the rationale behind the separation. The page isn't near getting too long. --Jiang|(Talk) 08:42, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't see how this case differs from Armenian alphabet, even if it's not alphabetic. I'm not familiar with Tibetan to know if it's truly alphabetic or not. If it soothes you, Esperanto calls it eo:Tibeta alfabeto. But then Esperanto also calls Hangul "Korean alphabet"-- and I know that's not the whole story. --Menchi 08:51, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Maybe "Tibetan script" or "Tibetan alphabet" would be more representative of the article, like how we have an article on Chinese characters, since the grammar and most of everything else is still located in the main article. --Jiang|(Talk) 22:06, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The Tibetan script is used to write other languages as well.

My preference would be for two separate articles ("Tibetan language", "Tibetan alphabet"). Note that "Tibetan alphabet" is more accurate than "Tibetan script" because "script" unnecessarily implies a cursive writing style. Omniglot, the best webpage on scripts and alphabets, prefers Tibetan alphabet, even though the system may be classified as a syllabary. -- technopilgrim 22:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

source citing

Umrao/217.88.115.5:

Please cite your sources. The Columbia Encyclopedia says the same thing. What have you got to say about this? --Jiang 21:59, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

Is Tibetan tonal? Agglutinating? a member of a language family?

Nanshu has proposed not describing Tibetan as tonal. I appreciate the fact that tones are less critical in Tibetan than in Mandarin, but I think it is a mistake to not classify the language as tonal. Two well-respected reference I can point to are the SIL Ethnologue and www.omniglot.com.

Also, I think it is most accurate to describe Tibetan as primarily isolating although somewhat agglutinative. To describe it as purely agglutinative is clearly misleading. I take my lead on this from the the Columbia Encyclopedia entry on Sino-Tibetan languages [1] and another wonderful website that I can't seem to put my finger on right now.

On the topic of Sino-Tibetan as a proposed language family, we need to steer clear of Sino-Tibetan politics. While it is unfortunate that the PRC propaganda machine finds it useful to point to this language family as part of their political claims over Tibet, we must not loose sight of the fact that the vast majority of independent linguists also find the Sino-Tibetan family an appropriate family designation, based solely on the linguistic evidence. The 36th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages was just held this last November with nary a sign of Beijing party bosses calling the shots. So I'm tweaking the wording to reflect this and ignoring the politics of it.

technopilgrim 19:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What is the most significant feature of Tibetan to be added to the first sentence? Maybe not adding it is better. Before offering my opinion, I notice you that I don't speak, read, or write Tibetan at all. My interests are the Tibetan script and Tibetans' political interactions with the Mongols.

Classifing the language as tonal is inappropriate. Tone characterizes most dialects but most Amdo dialects lack it. The emergence of tone was far later in Tibetan than in Chinese. In addition, written Tibetan doesn't reflect tone.

Isolating or agglutinative. Maybe Tibetan is a language which the traditional claffisication doesn't work for well. Sapir's old clafficiation is interesting. I don't know which is more significant, but I personally think Tibetan is more agglutinative than isolating.

I wouldn't describe "Tibetan" as a tone language because not all of its dialects have tones. Verbs are obviously inflected for tense/aspect/mood, so I don't think that Tibetan can be described as agglutinating or isolating. —Babelfisch 03:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

If you know which dialects have lost (or never acquired) tones, I endorse adding that to the article. There's no need to classify the language as either completely tonal or non-tonal if the reality is more complex. Please include references to substantiate which dialects are indeed non-tonal to avoid any controversy. Also, from what I understand, the most accurate description is to say that Tibetan has isolating characteristics, but is not nearly as isolating as Chinese. technopilgrim 04:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe Amdo and Kham don't have tones. Nor do Ladakhi and Balti to my knowledge. The isolating-agglutinative problem is similar. In Lhasa Tibetan it's pretty clear that it's agglutinative, because affixes don't recieve tone and are hence pretty easily recognisable as affixes. However, obviously that criterion can't really apply to the toneless dialects.

BovineBeast 15:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

What everyone seems to be missing here is that in Tibetan, unlike in Chinese, for example, the tones attach to the consonants themselves, and the vowels inherit them, whereas in Chinese the vowel sounds carry the tones.

A great deal of this article appears to have been lifted directly from Tournadre's Manual of Standard Tibetan, in violation of copyright.

The statement that adjectives follow nouns is quite simply wrong. Example - "Shi.mi.nak.bo" = black (nak.bo.) cat (shi.mi.) It should be noted that I am probably leaving out a silent letter or two, but if you read it as written you would be pronouncing correctly; a native speaker would understand you.

Interestly, the Tibetan word for table, "jok.tse." appears to be a Chinese loan-word (jwozi or chuo-tze).

The numbers 1-10 in Tibetan are clearly cognate with the same numbers in Cantonese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 (talk) 07:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

member of a family

Sino-Tibetan isn't so clear as the Indo-European language family, and I don't like to mention to it without noticing its uncertainty, maybe because I tend to be skeptical. Linguists were inclined to set up bigger language families but it is carefully reviewed today. They framed the Altaic language family and some built up the "Ural-Altaic language family". But today, almost no linguist supports the latter and many even question the former because the relationships between the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are not confirmed even though Altaic languages share several features. Thus at least Japanese linguists vaguely call them "Altaic languages" instead of using the term "language family." The same is true of Sino-Tibetan "languages", I think. Apparently, Chinese and Tibetan share some basic words, but their relationship isn't established yet. And I'd like to speficy the uncertainty. "Proposed" may not be good because all language families are nothing more than hypotheses. I hope someone find a better term. --Nanshu 23:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is incorrect. Sino-Tibetan is much more widely accepted than Altaic. What is essential here is not "shared words" but predictable sound changes between the two. This means that if "mother" is "mxxqqqkw" in one and "gbvpln" in the other, it is wrong to immediately assume there is no relation. Rather, you should dig deeper to look for other things. If "father" is "qqqmxxst" in one and "plgbvrz" in the other, and "horse" is "xxmstkw" in one and "bvgrzn" in the other, it becomes slowly apparent that there are regular sound correspondences between words with identical or extremely similar meaning.

To filter out borrowed words, a "Swadesh list" of 207 vocabulary words is often used. While a word like "encyclopedic", "astronomy", or "empire" is very likely to be borrowed from a different language, words on the Swadesh list such as "sun", "mother", "I", "skin", "tree", and the like are much less likely to be borrowed as they are the "core vocabulary" of the language, and studies have shown that on average, the words on the Swadesh list are the 207 slowest-changing words (ie, they have the lowest rate of being borrowed).

Thus the evidence is solid - this is not a proposed language family, the only people who disagree with it are non-linguists or highly nationalistic linguists. --Node 01:23, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that Sino-Tibetan is a well-established language family, though I would add the proviso that it doesn't seem to include Thai as some older books claim. FWIW, apparently Tibetan and Burmese are quite similar. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:59, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, Sino-Tibetan is not well established, for that mattter neither is Tibeto-Burman technically. A language family is well established when one can point to sound laws relating the relevant langauges. This can be easily done with indo-european e.g. Grimms law says a Indo-European K becomes H in germanic Germ. Haupt / Lat. Caput, Eng. hemp / Grk. Kannibas, Eng. heart / Gk. Kardia. etc. if anyone can point out such a soundlaw relating Chinese and Tibetan I will give him a hundred dollars.

I hereby name several prominent linguists who doubt the Sino-Tibetan hypothesis: Roy Andrew Miller, Christopher I. Beckwith, George van Driem. --Nathan hill 14:06, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

George van Driem does not, in fact, express any doubts at all that Chinese and Tibetan are related. Rather, he states that Chinese is, rather than being a primary branch, merely another language within Tibeto-Burman: his "Tibeto-Burman" thus has exactly the same membership as everyone else's "Sino-Tibetan". As for the sound laws, doesn't Sergei Starostin[2] claim to have them? - Mustafaa 18:33, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

All I said was that van Driem didn't support Sino-Tibetan. Also, Starostin's views are not at all widely accepted. Gong Hwang Cherng has apparently come up with some sound laws relating Burmese Tibetan and Chinese, but he writes in Chinese which I can't read. In any case the family is no where near as well established as Semetic and Indo-European and I think language articles and classifications should reflect this. --Nathan hill 12:41, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That Tibetan and Chinese are related should be pretty much beyond doubt. The only real question is whether Chinese is an outgroup of that language family or deeper within the tree. BovineBeast 15:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Can something that's not true be beyond doubt? I read and speak both languages and I disagree with you. Prove me wrong and I'll give you an imaginary kiss.

markup issues

There are markup issues in the last paragraph of Tibetan language#Evolution of Styles. It seems that there are issues with the number of ' used. I can't fix it myself, because I don't know if some of the ' are actually a part of a symbol, e.g. z'. If someone could fix this, that would be great, so it can be removed from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Syntax/double-quotes-065.txt.

– Foolip 13:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's text taken from an OCR of the 1911 EB. The only way to correct the text is to look at the 1911 EB, and I can't find actual scans online anywhere. The code is messed up, closing the italics isn't going to make it worse, so that's what I did. --Ben Brockert 00:52, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Tibetan script

I will be going through and attempting to add Tibetan letters to the article where appropriate, but I don't know the language well enough to be fully confident of my accuracy. Any corrections will be most appreciated. Thanks!

Ouch. I just noticed I forgot to sign that previous comment. It was me. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:35, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Missing group - Tibetic

Ethnologue lists the order of classification for the Tibetan language as Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Himalayish, Tibeto-Kanauri, Tibetic, and then the Tibetan language. Wikipedia seems to skip the group Tibetic. See this link: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90303 Any thoughts? ---User:Hottentot

Ethnologue has a lot of weird stuff on it. The most normal classification is that given by Benedict in his Conspectus, but I and many think that the subgrouping of the Tibeto-Burman laguages is merely speculation. --Nathan hill 18:38, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I recommend amending Wikipedia to reflect the Ethnologue classification. At points where serious modern scholarship suggests a subclass is grouped incorrectly in the Ethnologue, it's sensible to include links at that point in Wikipedia hierarchy to the alternative scholarship. But we need at least a straw man hierarchy to start with, and the Ethnologue is the best candidate. Nathan, have you read the Conspectus or do you have a copy? From what I can find in a web search [3], PK Benedict did not disagree with the existence of a Tibeto-Burman language family. You must be referring to classification choices made further out in the tree. For our education can you give us the classification of Tibetan per Benedict to show where it differs from the Ethnologue? technopilgrim 18:33, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Transliteration of Tibetan in Tibetan

What is the transliteration of བོད་ཡིག? I did some searching on Google, and I found the following names:

• Bod-jig?
• bod.yig
• bod pa
• bod skad
• Poe-Skey

Please, can someone help me out? Thanks. --Hottentot

"bod yig", "bod pa", and "bod skad" are all words meaning "tibetan". However, "bod skad" is, in my opinion, most accurate. In this case though I think it says "bod yig".

"bod pa" = 'a Tibetan (person)', "bod skad" = 'Tibetan language', "bod yig" = 'Tibetan script'. The form "bod-jig" is preferred by some scholars, especially in central and eastern Europe.Jakob37 08:58, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

bon religion and tibetan language

i'm planning to do research on what, if any, influence the bon religion has had on the tibetan language and it's development. right now, i'm too busy doing research on the hebrew language- and trying to LEARN the hebrew language- to do much research on the tibetan language. Gringo300 11:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

And what will you be enjoying for dinner tonight? Enquiring minds want to know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 (talk) 07:27, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

tibetan font

does anyone know of a good tibetan font so I could see the characters properly? --Revolución (talk) 16:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

There are problems with the Tibetan script used on the main page; It may be because the font is just generic Unicode and not a specifically Tibetan font such as Tibetan Machine Uni. I am trying to find someone in the Wikipedia network who knows about how to specify fonts used in Wikipedia articles. "Tibetan Machine Uni" can be used both on Windows and Mac platforms, but more successfully on the former since it is an Open Type font. There is a font called Xenotype Tibetan which has been designed for the Mac, which is more attractive in a way since it also includes (by request?) a version of the dbu-med style which is more beautiful and also in common use in Tibet, unfortunately the keyboard entry program that goes with Xenotype fonts is much more primitive and awkward than the one available for Windows (Keyman).

--- Prof. Jakob Dempsey

   YZU, Taiwan

Please don't specify a particular font. There are several Unicode Tibetan fonts for different platforms.[4] Specifying one particular font such as Tibetan Machine Uni wouldn't make sense. There have been similar discussions about IPA and Pe̍h-ōe-jī. —Babelfisch 06:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of which, why don't we just use an image, like many other script pages, instead of the box-filled text there is not? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.115.241.35 (Golden West Telecommunications; talk • contribs) 08:26, 21 September 2006 2006.

I don't think that's necessary. Wylie transliteration should be added to every Tibetan term, and from that the original spelling can be easily inferred. There is a universal standard for Tibetan for computers (Unicode), and people who can read the Tibetan script will probably get their computers to display it. —Babelfisch 05:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The Wylie system is a product of the 1950s when the prevailing idea was to restrict everything to the basic 26 letters. Although Prof. Wylie was once my Graduate Advisor, I don't think we need honor him by enshrining his system for all eternity. As a phonologist who often works with Tibetan, I find it convenient or instructive to use other romanisations at times, and anyone who deals a lot with Tibetan material from France, China, Germany, Hungary or other places will have to get used to a variety of transcriptions.Jakob37 13:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Since the first serious study of the Tibetan language by a westerner happened in the early 1700's (Ippolito Desideri, perhaps you've heard of him), the 1950's don't seem that terribly long ago to me, and Wylie's system has several virtues: no need to learn additional symbols, already in widespread use, and complete lack of ambiguity; you look at a Wylie transliteration and you can write the Tibetan word 100% correctly, every trip of the train. Of course, that assumes one can write Tibetan. I can. Canoe? The very few users of the ENGLISH version of Wikipedia who have occasion to deal with "a lot with Tibetan material from France, China, Germany, Hungary or other places" are already "used to a variety of transcriptions". Of course, a REAL phonologist would know that Wylie's system is "transliteration" NOT "transcription". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 (talk) 07:44, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Font issues: let's just put it simply: on the main article's page, the Tibetan script in the red panel at the top right does not display properly. (nor, as far as I can tell, anywhere else in Wikipedia where the script is displayed)Why not? and how can we fix it? (Also, I have no such problems with the script when using it in MS Word). Incidentally, some of this compliance with Unicode is browser-based. I cannot use my Unicode keyboard (Keyman) within Firefox, but it works within IE. But the Tibetan script in Wikipedia's articles appears faulty within both the Firefox and the IE environment.Jakob37 09:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Further bafflement - I was correcting something on the main page about Lhasa vowels -- hope nobody minds---and noticed that there was some Tibetan script within the Wiki-edit material which was properly stacked. Amazing, it can be done in Wikipedia! So, noting the still unstacked "bod•skad" in the red panel, I thought I would try to find some way to correct it, but lo and behold, when I opened up the Wiki-edit on the main page, it was displayed (stacked) correctly -- but then in a few seconds, it unstacked -- right before my eyes!! What is going on?! Jakob37 14:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Tibetan naming conventions

I thought that editors of this page might be interested to know that discussions are currently underway regarded naming conventions for Tibet-related articles. The main issue involved is how Tibetan words should be romanised, which means it could ultimately influence the style of every article where Tibetan names or words are used. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan). - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 22:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Closest language to Tibetan

Acording to Lonely Planet Tibetan Language is closest to Burmese. Krause seems to think otherwise but failed to prove that. So, Mr. Krause the Tibetan specialist, what language is closest to Tibetan? Me 04:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem here is confusing "language" with "language family". The closest language family to the Tibetan language family may well be the Burmese-lolo language family (though I believe some would argue). The closest language to Tibetan would be another Tibetic language of the central Tibetic group. See the helpful language trees in the Tibeto-Burman languages article for a clear picture of the relationships. An analogous mistake would be to claim that the closest language to German is Greek instead of Yiddish. Oy vey, such nonsense. -- technopilgrim 06:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with technopilgrim. A tourist guidebook such as the Lonely Planet is not the best source. Fortunately, we have a concise comparison of different proposals of the relationship of Tibetan with the other languages in that branch in the Wikipedia article on the Tibeto-Burman languages, with a list of some more authoritative sources. —Babelfisch 06:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Probably Tangut, but most Tangut speakers were massacred by Chinghis Qan in the 13th century. --Stephen Hodge 00:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The Tibeto-Burman group has many sub-branches. Those that contain Tangut or Burmese are not particularly close to Tibetan. The languages to the west, south-west of Tibetan, such as Kinauri and Pattani, seem closer, but the languages closest to Tibetan are in the so-called Bodic sub-branch, which includes a number of small languages spoken in Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, for example Tamang and Gurung. Even closer are Kaike and Ghale, and then there are languages such as Sherpa (Nepal) and Monpa (east of Bhutan) which could actually be classed as Tibetan dialects. Tibetan proper has many dialects, often mutually unintelligible, but they all use the same script (although the script represents a different, more ancient dialect, and is only accessible to about 10% of the population).Jakob37 07:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Could the Dalai lama, and educated Tibetans read and or understand Myanmar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.211.144 (talk) 04:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Burmese and Tibetan are not mutually intelligible. That goes for the written language too. Live for nothing or die for something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 (talk) 07:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Excellent additions to the verbs section

Stephen Hodge, thanks for your excellent contributions explaining verbs in Tibetan. If I could speak Tibetan I would be addressing you with the honorific mdzad to show my respect. Thanks for your scholarly and concise contributions to Wikipedia, I am now going to take the time to read more of them. --technopilgrim 00:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the accolade ! It's late here, but I'll add some more info about noun honorifics in the next day or so, as well as anything else that seems useful.

Butter tea

Is pocha a Tibetan word? If so, can someone add the Tibetan script for this to the Butter tea article? Badagnani 09:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I've put the word as it is in the Tibetan language (as best as it can be represented); as far as I remember, it's pronounced [pʰø̀dza] I've also added the Tibetan words in the Tsampa article. -Yupik 21:39, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Aspect and Negative

Thank you for alerting me to this apparently important work which I have not yet seen, but how widely accepted is Zeisler's hypothesis ? If it does not yet have full acceptance as a normative explanation, the part dealing with aspect or otherwise should be worded appropriately.

One problem with this article is that it does not differentiate between Classical Tibetan (chos-skad), Medieval Tibetan and Modern Tibetan, spoken and literary. Thus the negative ma is most definitely used with the imperative stem in Classical Tibetan style, even if prohibitions use a present stem in Modern Tibetan.--Stephen Hodge 17:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Zeisler's book is too new to be widely accepted. However, although the idea that the

Wait a minute. Zeisler's book is too new, and Wylie's TRANSLITERATION system is too old? Sounds like Little Red Riding Hood checking in.

Tibetan verbs express "aspect" is fairly wide spread, to my knowledge no one has argued for it explicitly. As for the negation with 'ma' I have never seen an example of the imperative negated with ma, but have seen a number of examples of the present negated with ma used for prohibitions, here is an example I happen to have on hand. pha-ma gnyis na-re | « nged•gnyis rgas-pas ma•shi bar-du rgya•gar-du ma•'gro ! » zer "My two parents said "because we are getting old, do not go to india until we have died!" this is fro the Shangs pa rnam thar in the Gangs can rig mdzod series, published in Lhasa at teh Tibetan academy of social sciences, pg. 5. The text is not dated but Mathew Kapstein argues for 12th century (if I recall correctly).

Small correction - it should be "ma•shi bar-du" , i.e. "bar" is connected with the following, not the preceding syllable, and means "interval", so "in the interval of not (yet) dying". I put a "•" between syllables to show close juncture, where the second syllable's tone is dependent on the first, and "-" for loose juncture, where the second tone more or less preserves its original form. I suggest either marking this way (which means you must know how to pronounce Tibetan) or otherwise just leaving everything unconnected because if you start putting in marks where they don't belong it will mislead others. I corrected your whole text above; feel free to restore the errors if you wish...p.s. I agree about the use of ma• . If interested, please see my long review of Zeisler's book at the Linguist network site.Jakob37 13:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I think in Michael Hahn's text book "Lehrbuch der Klassische Tibetische Schriftsprache" he also says that prohibitons are formed with ma plus the present tense. If you have examples of prohibitions formed with ma plus the imperative I would love to have them. I dont feel comfortable putting my name or email address in such a public forum, but you already have enough information from the message I left on your talk page to figure out who I am. Or, you could just post the examples right here. --best

Lhasa Tibetan vowels

Long vowels also occur in some foreign loanwords, such as "Dalai Lama" (Tibetan: ཏ་ཱལའི་བླ་མ་, Wylie: Taa-la’i Bla-ma; IPA: [taːlɛː lama]).

1) The above information, according to the authoritative Yu Dao-quan dictionary --- the only large dictionary I know of which has fairly accurate information on Lhasa Tibetan pronunciation, and don't mention Mel Goldstein, his information has been inaccurate for decades --- it's [talɛː lama], the "a-chung" is only written after the "t" because it's a foreign (Mongolian) word, so there's no traditional way. 2) The information on the vowels is incomplete: The two most extensive and detailed records of Lhasa Tibetan (the works of Chang and Shefts and the Tibetan-Chinese dictionary edited by Yu Dao-quan) both describe two additional vowels: an unrounded centralised mid-high front vowel, and a rounded centralised mid-high back vowel, heard for example in the verbs 'to arrive'<slebs> and 'to return' <log>. There may be other varieties of Central Tibetan which lack these spoken vowels, but since no other varieties have been extensively described, the issue remains moot. Also there is the central unrounded vowel as in "lab" (speak) which is also found extensively in vowel harmony environments. It's occurrence as a non-predictable phoneme may be somewhat marginal, but that's even more the case with the voiced "th" in English, which is nonetheless widely recognized as a phoneme. If agreeable, the above can be revised and distilled into properly formal text for the article. Jakob37 14:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your input on this, Jakob. It's clear that you know a lot more about this subject than I do; my knowledge is basically limited to what I've read in Tournadre and Dorje's Manual of Standard Tibetan, which I attempted to summarise to produce the "phonology of Lhasa Tibetan" section for this article. Regarding the pronunciation of "Dalai Lama", I trust you're correct; I couldn't find the pronunciation I had written anywhere. Tournadre and Dorje do state that, "The subscript ‘a chung has the effect of lengthening the vowel", but it's difficult to tell from the context whether he's referring to the modern spoken form.

Looking over Tournadre and Dorje's material on vowel phonology, it does seem that the article's current treatment is a bit incomplete. In fact, they describe roughly the same three vowels that you mention above; however, they describe them as a series of allophones which occur only in closed syllables. Thus, according to Tournadre and Dorje, [ε] is an allophone of [e] in closed syllables; [ɔ] is an allophone of [o] in closed syllables; and [ə] or [ʌ] is an allophone of [a]. Also, Tournadre and Dorje say that the allophone of [e] is identical to the umlauted form of [a] (in las, etc.); they are both described as [ε]. Consequently, it's not clear to me whether Wikipedia should describe these values as allophones or as distinct phonemes. Do minimal pairs exist for them?

In view of Jakob's expertise on the matter, I will ultimately go along with his recommendations.

By the way, in hindsight, I'm not sure whether or not it was wise for me to refer to the thing under discussion as "Lhasa Tibetan", since Tournadre and Dorje use "Standard Tibetan" or "Central Tibetan". I've found it difficult to clarify the precise implications of these different terms, but it seemed to me that the existence of a "Standard Tibetan" is a bit controversial, and I've gotten the impression that "Central Tibetan" is sometimes (usually?) used to refer to other Ü-Tsang dialects that differ from what Tournadre and Dorje describe (such as by having a retroflex stop phoneme instead of a retroflex affricate, and/or by preserving the older three-way plosive series).—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 21:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Spelling

"kham" appears to be misspelled in the section on tones, with "na" replacing "ma". My computer doesn't deal well with Tibetan script, so I don't know how to correct this. --Gimme danger 09:02, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

It renders correctly for me.—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 22:25, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Tibetan Scouting

Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Tibetan script? Thanks! Chris 03:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Last paragraph

Goes as follows: "The Chinese authorities occupying Tibet are making life impossible for Tibetans who are not fluent in Mandarin Chinese by passing laws to minimise teaching of Tibetan in schools and by replacing Tibetan language with Chinese language in many spheres of public life." That's not neutral. 194.154.66.89 (talk) 23:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

While I fully support the idea that once you invoke Hitler it means you've lost the argument, I can't resist; "The German authorities occupying Poland are making life impossible for Jews by herding them into big honking ovens." Also not neutral. "The southern plantation owners are making life impossible for kidnapped Africans and their descendants by holding them as slaves." Also not neutral (though some of the big houses were quite lovely, I do declare). SOMETIMES TRUTH ISN'T NEUTRAL. That having been said, I would quarrel with the truth of the phrase "makng life impossible". Interesting that you're more concerned with neutrality than truth. Oh well, that's the world of Wikinerdia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.77.67 (talk) 08:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)