307 28 43MB
English Pages 485 [511] Year 1984
COMPILED BY
Melvyn C. Goldstein WITH
Ngawangthondup Narkyid
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles • London
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd. London, England
© 1984 by The Regents of the University of California
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Goldstein, Melvyn C. English-Tibetan dictionary of modern Tibetan.
1. English language-Dictionaries- Tibetan. II. Title. PL3637.T52G65 1984 423'.9541 83-18119 ISBN 0-520-05157-2
I. Narkyid, Nganwangthondup.
Contents Acknowledgments
vii
Introduction
ix
Grammatical Introduction
xi
Tibetan Alphabet List of Abbreviations English-Tibetan Dictionary
XXV
xxvi
1
Acknowledgments The following dictionaries and glossaries were consulted in the preparation of this dictionary: A, IN ENGLISH C. S, T. M,
A. C. G. C.
Bell. English-Tibetan Colloquial Dictionary, West Bengal, 1~05, Dos. Tibetan-English Dictionary. Calcutta, 1~02, Dhongthog, The New Light English-Tibetan Dictionary. Dhoromsolo 1 1~73, Goldstein and N. Nornong. Modern Spoken Tibetan: Lhasa Dialect, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1970.
B, IN TIBETAN AND TIBETAN CHINESE Anon, Rgyo bod shin sbyor gyi tshig mdzod, Peking, 1964, Anon. Rgyo bod ming mdzod. Peking, 1~7~. Bsom gton et ol. Dog yig gsor bsgri~s. Ch 1 inghoi 1 1~79, Bsod noms rgya1 mtshan, Tshig mdzod brdo dog .kun gsol me long, Peking, 1~80, L. S, Dogyob. Bod brda'i tshig mdzod. Dharomsa1o 1 1966, Dge bshes chos kyi grogs, Brdo dog ming tshig gso1 bo bzhugs, Peking, 1~57. The preparation of this volume was mode possible by grants from the Research Tools and Reference Works Program of the Notional Endowment for the Humanities, and the International Research and Studies Program of the Deportment of Education,
vii
Introduction This dictionary was compiled during a thirty-month period beginning in the Summer of 1980 under the sponsorship of the National Endowment "for the Humanities
(RT-*13.74-80) and the Institute for
International Studies, U,S, Department of Education (G008001738), My aim in compiling this English-to-Tibetan dictionary was to produce for the first time a Tibetan dictionary that was semantically sensitive, that is 1 able to bridge the semantic gap between English and Tibetan so that English speakers could express themselves effectively in Tibetan, Let me illustrate the type ·of semantic incongruity this dictionary tries to overcome, Where English uses
~
term,
"blow," for three types of action--(1) the blowing out of a flame (e,g, 1 a candle) 1 (2) the blowing of
----
the wind 1 and (3) blowing air (e.g,, into a balloon)--Tibetan utilizes three different terms, Earlier
-~
dictionaries and glossaries at best simply listed various Tibetan terms that represented submeanings in English without indicating which of the English submeanings they conveyed, The user had no way of knowing whether he was selecting the term for "the blowing of ·the wind" when he was trying to "the blowing
up of a
balloon," The present dictionary was compiled
precisely
express
to overcome such
discontinuities between Tibetan and English, Thus 1 it is concerned primarily with spoken communication and is meant to provide English speakers with the spoken Tibetan equivalents of English terms in a semantically sensitive framework, To produce a dictionary of this type, previous works could not be used as prime building blocks 1 and Mr. Ngawangthondup Narkyid 1 a noted Tibetan scholar, and I accordingly started from scratch, We began with the unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language ( 1967) and went through
the
entries from A to Z 1 debating and arguing, not only on spoken usage in Tibetan, but often on current usage
in American English. My colleagues at Case Western Reserve University and Tibetan friends
throughout the U.S.A. and abroad were often drawn into these discussions, and their patience and advice were greatly appreciated, Since I
assume that this dictionary will be used primarily by teachers,
students, and scholars, we have included not only "basic" English lexical items such as "house" and· "blow" but also terms that might be useful in research or scholarly communication, On the other hand 1 it seemed pointless to include obscure words such as "prolegomenon," "proleg 1 11 or
11
proline 1 11 since
these either have more standard English equivalents or fall within the realm of highly technical subspecialties such as organic chemisJ:-ry and would be meaningless to all but a handful of Tibetans who would probably already know the English term. It is important to note that in no instances did we simply transrate definitions of English terms into Tibetan, While such translation-definitions might be useful for Tibetans learning English, they do not assist native English speakers studying Tibetan, Instead, we tried to select Tibetan terms and phroses that could be used equivalently in spoken Tibetan. For example, we did not define "ketchup" as "a type of sauce for food 1 11 since this would be of no help to English speakers communicating in Tibetan, Finally, although we consulted older Tibetan dictionaries, including a realphabetized version ix
x
Introduction
of my own, large Tibetan-English Dictionary of Modern Tibetan (Bibliotheca Himalayica, Series II, Vol. 7., Ratna Pustak Bhandar, Kathmandu, 1975), in the end our decisions regarding equivalent terms were based on our own knowledge of modern Tibetan. It is worth reiterating that our guiding principle was simple: what would the user hove to know to convey English terms in Tibetan.
Thus, whenever there was
an option between a spoken and a more literary term, the spoken term was always selected. This spoken orientation of the dictionary, however, does not preclude its usefulness in communicating in modern written Tibetan, since the written loreuoge is based to a large extent on the spoken. In fact, we see assisting Westerners to write and spell correctly in Tibetan as one of the important functions of the dictionary. Two techniques have been employed to convey the relationship between the Tibetan oi1d English semantic universes. The first consists of indicating which submeaning of English terms is intended by means of very brief paraphrases introduced usually by
~
(in the sense of). The second technique is
to provide a sentence or clause to illustrate the usage of that submeoning. For example, for the term "blunt" we distinguish two submeonings: (1) iso. not sharp and (2) iso. frank. With each of these submeanings we provide on illustrative sentence. For (1) the example is (2) it is
11
11
This knife is blunt," and for
He is very blunt." There are, of course, other submeonings of "blunt," but we felt that
these were the two most useful and common meanings. Clearly 1 then, the present dictionary does not attempt to list comprehensively all submeonings of English terms, but rather presents only what we consider the more important submeonings.
Illustrative examples are also often used to demonstrate the
most common form of syntactic construction used for that entry. In many cases common English terms simply could not be meaningfully translated into Tibetan and were omitted. We hove also tried to ovoid including newly invented Tibetan terms that ore used only by a small group of intellectuals. In general, we preferred to toke less precise, "common" phraseologies that would be universally understood in context rather than arcane, newly invented terms. When we have included more specialized new terms, we assume either that they ore widely used,
that they ore
self-explanatory from the constituent morphemes, or that they will be used only by specialists in
tho~
field (e.g., physicians for medical terms). Finally 1 it is important t.o note that there are really two speech communi ties of Lhasa Tibetan. One consists of the Tibetans now residing in exile in such countries as India, Nepal, England; the other, of the Tibetans residing in Tibet. Whiie these two groups hove absolutely no difficulty in comm~nicoting,
divergences with regard to new vocabulary hove occurred since their initial separation
in 1959. Although it is not unlikely that the two speech communi ties will continue to diverge in the years ahead--with the "exile" Tibetans continuing to use substantial numbers of English and Hindi phonological borrowings as well as newly coined terms, and Lhasa Tibetans using Chinese phonological borrowings and other newly coined terms (which ore indicated in the dictionary by
11
c 11 )--with only a few
exceptions the terms used in the present dictionary will be understood by Tibetans both in Tibet and in exile. Melvyn C. Goldstein Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio March 1983
G ra·mmatical Introduction In contrast to English, meo·ning in Tibetan is basically syllabic in that most Tibetan syllables
have meaning independent of the compound word
(morpheme) in which they ore found,
For
example, just as the English word "soldier" is disyllabic, so too is the Tibetan word for "soldier" (dmag mi). However, while neither of the two English syllables has a separate meaning, both of the Tibetan syllables have: dmag 1 war;
~~
person, This syllabic structure affords tremendous flexibility
with respect to both the expression of new ideas
and concepts and the expression of old ones in new
and original ways, Because of-this, an understanding of patterns of word formation in Tibetan will aid i~using
the reader
this dictionary effectively,
A. Word Formation 1. Nominal compounds Nominal compounds consist of two or four syllables each of which is o nonderived noun, 1,1 Synonymic compounds Synonymic compounds consist of two syllables that are synonyms, The overall meaning of the compound word is identical to the meaning of the component parts, For example,
~Z\~'..ft:!
when there is impeccable secondhand information from someone having such knowledge) and certainly conveys this;
~~
and this is important, it also conveys a dimension I shall call "specificity,"
Specificity refers to the fact that
12~~-
is always used with respect to knowledge deriving ·from a
specific situation or state and is never useg for general, usual, or corrmonly known situations or -.r states. For these the-.:.~.~"\~·"'\"\ form is used. When fl.S"1.
abolition of slavery
/ffi!:,epo s£yoo/
11 the
bran g,yog mad po bzo yog
absent
. .
")
(th££ny~~ ~epa s~yoo
A-bomb 1 see:
atomic bomb
abominable ~.q'j'CI:>'t\'
zhig
/t~;;.qco'?l/
·kho sdug chag red, on aborigine,
11 He is abominable,
(qho t~;;.qco'?l r!~l
~·~~~ot~·
aborigine is
is o meadow above that,
/th5~cc ytrumi/
kho thog ma'i yul mi
11 He
lha'?l yb·ona)
red,
/y§_nccc/
terminate, vo. A, !'1-1~·"'1.@\..l'
abstain, 1. iso. refrain from, va. sho spongs pa red.
bal po mi
tsh!5qpo/
dir chu mang po
absorbent cotton
1
m_!,ntut)
academic association ~·~~-~~ ch!:_&/
He got the {government) passport because he
affiliated with the school,
{qho lopi&& qhont:>~ ch!:_hsaan sh,!:!?Jqi
l~qkhee r~~pare~)
affinity ~F-~-
~ She has a great offin-
/yiQ/
dbyings zhe drag
mo gangs shur glad
yag
la
(m~ qh2_1)shuu lti"Syo~la
'dug.
assert
affix, see:
afford, va, [Note: to 1 ; also see:
1
Use the verb
1
buy 1 with
1
able
expenses, ']
~._-'~\~·~s--
/shil')na~ s'§_d/
afraid, see: to school,
kho tshos dmag sgar la me
frightened; scared /sh,!:!tla/
1
2. iso, make
~ After this I shall go
di 1 i gzhug la nga slob grwar
1
gro ~
ngas kha lag zas
gzhug la deb bklogs pa yin,
S!:_£p&& sh~tla th!P 13~payin) ~
{r:JE_t qhala~
/qh~ntsam son&/
She left and after a while he came,
chi~n& qh~ntsam s&l& qho leku)
mo phyin (mo
[Syn. gang tsam
zhig nos]
~
--:>
3, iso, expel! the afterbirth, va.
-- ~::> qhi n~~tary t~~ru toanparea)
11 atomic age (era)
(t~t~~n th~rep)
rdul phren dus robs
red?
4. iso,
aggression, 1. n, ?> chao/
11 Her maternal uncle hod· aged. (m~
mo'i a zhang rgan gog chogs shag. q_£nq::>~ chaoshao)
oshaan
iso. persons looking youthful ~~~·"'\']f'"
ageless, ~ 2t-
/sh~nso todpo/
gzhon bzo dod po red, age limit Q:l-~""-·
11 He is ageless.
/tuqshiin k::_p/
11 She has agitated them,
mos (m!fd
~C::-N.' /l~qun/
p::_ruu
Tibetan adds
(qho sh~nso toopo r~a) government~~
11 intelligence agency
so· pa 1 i
[Note: tshogs pa can
/thiiu/
~-o.r
ago
~~~flo/
a,~;c_·
/leechar/
agent,
1.
iso,
authorized
ch~een/
American bank, las
don
l')lj[J_
2. iso. authorized ~--'t\'6':l~'19.\'? 'ClJ.' Ct.!~·
agricul turol cooperative
/sh_!~lcc thEnkee nomteeqaan/
~C.'o.I