Tibetan Language
The Tibetan language is primarily spoken in the Tibet Autonomous Region and surrounding areas in China, as well as among Tibetan expatriate communities globally. Its development has been influenced by the region's challenging geography, resulting in a variety of dialects, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Linguists generally categorize Tibetan into five major dialect groups: Northern, Eastern, Southern, Western, and Central, with Standard Tibetan originating from the Central dialect spoken in Lhasa. The language has three main forms—Classical, formal, and colloquial—each exhibiting distinct grammatical and lexical features. Tibetan has its roots in Sanskrit, first emerging as a written language in the 7th century CE and becoming standardized in the 9th century. Today, approximately six million people speak Tibetan, with Northern Tibetan being the most widely used dialect. Tibetan serves as an official language in the Tibet Autonomous Region alongside Mandarin Chinese, and it is used in regional media and education. Despite its rich historical background, Tibetan incorporates many loanwords from Chinese due to the lack of native terms for contemporary concepts.
Tibetan Language
The Tibetan language is primarily spoken in the Tibet Autonomous Region, nearby parts of China, and in Tibetan expatriate and exile communities in various countries around the world. Nestled in a mountainous area centered to the northeast of the Himalayas, Tibet's unique geography has significantly contributed to the development of the Tibetan language, as its regional populations—isolated from one another by forbidding alpine terrain—independently developed their own dialects, not all of which are mutually intelligible. This has led to some disagreement among linguists who have not come to a consensus in regards to which dialects should or should not be properly considered separate languages in their own right. However, prevailing models subdivide the Tibetan language into five major dialect groups: Northern, Eastern, Southern, Western, and Central. Together, these dialect groups include a total of fifty-three distinct regional variations. Standard Tibetan is derived from the Central dialect, which is spoken in the autonomous region's capital city, Lhasa.
Tibetan exists in three distinctive forms, each of which displays its own unique grammatical and lexical conventions. These forms include Classical Tibetan, as seen in the literature of bygone generations, as well as formal and colloquial variations of the contemporary tongue. Given the Tibetan Autonomous Region's history of isolation, the language lacks its own terms for many contemporary technological, scientific, political, and administrative phenomena. As such, it has come to include many Chinese loan words, which are used to describe concepts not covered in standard or regional forms of Tibetan.
History and Classification of the Tibetan Language
The origins of the contemporary Tibetan language can be traced back to Sanskrit, an ancient literary tongue that proliferated across the Himalayas and the historical region of Greater India. Belonging to the Indo-Aryan language group, Sanskrit is the root of many of the contemporary languages that are spoken throughout the area; Tibetan, as a standardized tongue, first emerged around the ninth century of the Common Era (CE). It initially evolved as a translational language, allowing sacred Buddhist texts from India to be converted from their original forms into a language that could be understood by the peoples of the present-day Tibetan Autonomous Region. The first distinctively Tibetan alphabet dates to about the seventh century CE, and is traditionally attributed to Songtsen Gampo (c. 569 CE–649 CE), a Tibetan minister who traveled to India to study writing systems for religious purposes, and who created the earliest known Tibetan system of writing upon his return.
Some scholars divide the Tibetan language into five distinct developmental phases, which include Archaic, Old, Classical, Medieval, and Modern Tibetan. The study of Archaic Tibetan is largely speculative in nature, given that the first written forms of the language belong to the Old Tibetan phase, which was eventually standardized during the reign of King Khri-Ide Srong-btsan (c. 806 CE–c. 838 CE) beginning in 816 CE. This standardization process resulted in the emergence of Classical Tibetan, from which the Medieval and Modern forms of the language subsequently descended. Classical Tibetan was written in an elegant syllabary script derived from Sanskrit, which provided the direct basis for the writing system still used in the present time.
Modern Tibetan is closely related to several other languages spoken in the Himalayan region, including Dzongkha, Ladakhi, Sherpa, and Sikkimese. It is classified as a member of the Tibeto-Burmese branch of a larger group of languages known as the Sino-Tibetan family.
From a structural standpoint, Tibetan typically uses a subject-object-verb word order with modifiers that precede nouns. It is considered a tonal tongue, meaning that all spoken syllables are delivered in a distinctive tone that forms the basis of proper word pronunciation. Standard Tibetan features a total of eight vowel sounds, some of which have no English equivalent, while consonants alternate between aspirated and unaspirated.
Animate nouns—nouns that describe a living thing—are gendered in Tibetan, while inanimate nouns are ungendered. Verbs feature four stem forms, including imperative, past, present, and future. These four verb forms are distinguished from one another through the use of prefixes, suffixes, and variations in vowel character. One unique feature of Tibetan is the presence of a wide range of verb forms used to refer to individuals of advanced social or political standing.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
It is estimated that, at present, a total of six million people worldwide speak Tibetan. The vast majority of Tibetan speakers live in the Tibet Autonomous Region, though sizeable populations that use the language also live in adjacent parts of China, including the Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan provinces. In addition, small minorities of Tibetan speakers live in parts of Bhutan, Nepal, India, Taiwan, Europe, and the United States.
Of the major dialect groups, Northern Tibetan is the most widely spoken, with an estimated 2.3 million speakers, mostly living in Tibet and adjacent parts of China. Central Tibetan has slightly less than two million speakers, while Western and Southern Tibetan have approximately 900,000 combined speakers.
The Tibetan tongue is an official language in the Tibet Autonomous Region, a status it shares with Mandarin Chinese. Standard Tibetan is used in regional radio and television broadcasting, and most Tibetan schools offer instruction in Tibetan or a combination of Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese, depending on the ethnic makeup of the student population.
Bibliography
Berzin, Alexander, and W.D. Shakabpa Tsepon. "A Survey of Tibetan History." The Berzin Archives. The Berzin Archives. Web. 20 Sept. 2015. http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/e-books/unpublished‗manuscripts/survey‗tibetan‗history/chapter‗1.html
Beyer, Stephan V. The Classical Tibetan Language. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992. Print.
Hodge, Stephen. An Introduction to Classical Tibetan. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1990. Print.
Majumder, Sanjoy. "Why Is Sanskrit So Controversial?" BBC News. BBC. Web. 20 Sept. 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28755509
Thompson, Irene, and Jon Phillips. "Tibetan." About World Languages. Technology Development Group. Web. 20 Sept. 2015. http://aboutworldlanguages.com/tibetan
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