Tibetan alphabet

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
Tibetan
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.[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]

Type Abugida
Contents Languages Tibetan, Dzongkha,
Ladakhi, Sikkimese, Balti,
History
Tamang, Sherpa, Yolmo,
Description
Basic alphabet
Tshangla
Consonant clusters Time c. 650–present
Head letters period
Sub-joined letters Parent Unknown - Under Debate
Vowel marks and numerals systems [a]
Modifiers
Extended use Brāhmī
Extended alphabet
Gupta
Extended vowel marks and modifiers
Romanization and transliteration Siddhaṃ
Input method and keyboard layout
Tibetan
Tibetan
Dzongkha
Child Limbu, Lepcha, 'Phags-pa
Unicode systems
See also Sister Assamese, Bengali
systems
Notes
References Direction Left-to-right

External links ISO 15924 Tibt, 330

Unicode Tibetan
alias
History Unicode U+0F00–U+0FFF
range
The creation of the Tibetan alphabet is attributed to Thonmi Sambhota of the mid-7th century. Tradition holds that Thonmi Sambhota,
[a] The origin of the Brahmic scripts is
a minister of Songtsen Gampo (569-649), was sent to India to study the art of writing, and upon his return introduced the alphabet.
not universally agreed upon.
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 is ཨ /a/. The alphabet ཨ /a/ 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 ofibetan
T words.
 Unaspirated Aspirated Voiced Nasal
high medium low low

Letter IPA Letter IPA Letter IPA Letter 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 /ra/
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  /kra/ or  /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  rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster  /rnya/. Similarly, the consonants ཝ /wa/, ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change
form when they are beneath other consonants; thus /kwa/;  /kra/;  /kja/.

ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ
Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance, the consonants
/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 consonantsད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/.[2]

Head letters
The superscript position above a radical is reserved for the consonantsར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/.

When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position withཀ /ka/, ཅ /tʃa/, ཏ /ta/, པ /pa/ and ཙ /tsa/, there are no changes in the sound, they look and sound like:

 /ka/,  /ta/,  /pa/,  /tsa/

 /ka/,  /tʃa/,  /ta/,  /pa/,
 /ka/, /tʃa/,  /ta/,  /pa/,  /tsa/
When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position withག /kʰa/, ཇ /tʃʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/ and ཛ /tsʰa/, they loose their aspiration and sounds change. They look
and sound like:

 /ga/,  /d͡ʒa/,  /da/,  /ba/,  /dza/

 /ga/,  /d͡ʒa/,  /da/,  /ba/,
 /ga/, /d͡ʒa/,  /da/,  /ba/,  /dza/
When ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/ are in superscript position withང /ŋa/, ཉ /ɲa/, ན /na/ and མ /ma/, the nasal sound gets high. They look and sound like:

 /ŋa/,  /ɲa/,  /na/,  /ma/

 /ŋa/,  /ma/
 /ŋa/,  /ɲa/,  /na/,  /ma/

Sub-joined letters
The subscript position under a radical is for the consonantsཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/.

Vowel marks and numerals

The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/,  /i/,  /u/,  /e/, and  /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant or radical, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/,
ཀི /ki/,  /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels  /i/,  /e/, and  /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while the vowel  /u/ is placed underneath consonants.[2] Old Tibetan included a
reversed form of the mark for /i/, the 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
Tibetan numerals ༪ ༫ ༬ ༭ ༮ ༯ ༰ ༱ ༲ ༳
Arabic numerals 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.5 7.5 8.5 9.5

Modifiers

Symbol/
Name Function
Graphemes

༄ ཡིག་མགོ་ marks beginning of text

yig mgo

༈ ལ་ཤད་ separates sections of meaning equivalent to topics and sub-topics

sbrul shad

༉ བར་ཡིག་མགོ་ list enumerator (Dzongkha)

bskur yig mgo

་ ག་ morpheme delimiter
tsek

། ག་ བ་ full stop (marks end of a section of text)

tshig-grub

༎ དོན་ཚན་ full stop (marks end of a whole topic)

don-tshan

༴ བ ས་གས་ repetition
bsdus rtags

༺ ག་གས་གཡོན་ left bracket

gug rtags g.yon

༻ ག་གས་གཡས་ right bracket

gug rtags g.yas

༼ ཨང་ཁང་གཡོན་ left bracket used for bracketing with a roof over

ang khang g.yon

༽ ཨང་ཁང་གཡས་ right bracket used for bracketing with a roof over

ang khang g.yas

Extended use
The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such asBalti and Sanskrit, often has additional and/or modifiedgraphemes
taken from the basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds.

Extended alphabet

Letter Used in Romanization & IPA

ཫ Balti kka /qa/

ཬ Balti rra /ɽa/

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 /d̪ ʱ/

བྷ Sanskrit bha /bʱ/

ཥ Sanskrit ṣa /ʂ/

ཀྵ Sanskrit kṣa /kʂ/ A text in Tibetan script suspected to be

Sanskrit in content. From the personal
In Balti, consonants ka, ra are represented by reversing the lettersཀ ར (ka, ra) to give ཫ ཬ (ka, ra). artifact collection of Donald Weir.
In Sanskrit, "cerebral consonants" ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ṇa, ṣa are represented by reversing the lettersཏ ཐ ད ན ཤ (ta, tha, da,
na, sha) to give ཊ ཋ ཌ ཎ ཥ (Ta, Tha, Da, Na, Sa).
In Sanskrit, It is a classic rule to transliterate ca, cha, ja, jha, toཙ ཚ ཛ ཛྷ (tsa, tsha, dza, dzha), respectively. Nowadays, ཅ ཆ ཇ (ca, cha, ja, jha) can also be used.

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 /ṛ/

ྲཱྀ Sanskrit ṝ /ṝ/

ླྀ Sanskrit ḷ /ḷ/

ླཱྀ Sanskrit ḹ /ḹ/

ཾ Sanskrit aṃ /ṃ/

ྃ Sanskrit aṃ /ṃ/

ཿ Sanskrit aḥ /ḥ/

Symbol/
Name Used in Function
Graphemes

྄ 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 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)[5] 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

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
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 W
indows.

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.
Tibetan keyboard layout

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 Bhutanin 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 andibetan
T 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 theUnicode 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 theBurmese 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

U+0F9x ྐ ྑ ྒ ྒྷ ྔ ྕ ྖ ྗ ྙ ྚ ྛ ྜ ྜྷ ྞ ྟ

U+0FAx ྠ ྡ ྡྷ ྣ ྤ ྥ ྦ ྦྷ ྨ ྩ ྪ ྫ ྫྷ ྭ ྮ ྯ

U+0FBx ྰ ྱ ྲ ླ ྴ ྵ ྶ ྷ ྸ ྐྵ ྺ ྻ ྼ ྾ ྿

U+0FCx ࿀ ࿁ ࿂ ࿃ ࿄ ࿅ ࿆ ࿇ ࿈ ࿉ ࿊ ࿋ ࿌ ࿎ ࿏

U+0FDx ࿐ ࿑ ࿒ ࿓ ࿔ ࿕ ࿖ ࿗ ࿘

U+0FEx

U+0FFx

Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 11.0

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
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. Chamberlain 2008
2. 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. 4. See for instance [1] (http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_bo.pdf)[2] (http://www.eki.e
Recent study suggests Tibetan script was based on an adaption from Khotan e/wgrs/rom2_dz.pdf)
of the Indian Brahmi and Gupta scripts taught to Thonmi Sambhota in Kashmir 5. [https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/tibetan.pdf ALA-LC
(Berzin, Alexander. A Survey of Tibetan History - Reading Notes Taken by Romanization of Tibetan script (PDF)
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 ).

References
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 ibet".T 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 T ibetan, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 35.3:89-96.
Jäschke, Heinrich August. (1989).Tibetan Grammar. Corrected by Sunil Gupta. Reprinted by Delhi: Sri Satguru.

External links
Tibetan Calligraphy—how to write the Tibetan script.
Elements of the Tibetan writing system.
Unicode area U0F00-U0FFF, Tibetan script (162KB)
Encoding Model of the Tibetan Script in the UCS
Digital Tibetan
Tibetan Scripts, Fonts & Related Issues—THDL articles on Unicode font issues; free cross-platform OpenT
ype fonts—Unicode compatible.
Free Tibetan Fonts Project
Ancient Scripts: Tibetan

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