Standard Tibetan Grammar [Volume I: The Thirty Verses of Minister Thumi] 9789937572354, 9789937572149

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STANDARD TIBETAN GRAMMAR VOLUME I: THE THIRTY VERSES OF MINISTER THUMI

TONY DUFF PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE

STANDARD TIBETAN GRAMMAR VOLUME I: THE THIRTY VERSES OF MINISTER THUMI

TONY DUFF PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE

Pre-publication copy for scholarly review only. No distribution or copying by any means allowed. Copyright © 2009 Tony Duff. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher. First edition, 7th June 2005 Second edition, 23rd April 2009 ISBN: Janson typeface with diacritical marks and Tibetan Classic typeface Designed and created by Tony Duff Tibetan Computer Company http://www.tibet.dk/tcc Sanskrit text set in Devanågari courtesy of Om Karananda Ashram’s ITranslator98 software. Produced, Printed, and Published by Padma Karpo Translation Committee P.O. Box 4957 Kathmandu NEPAL Web-site and e-mail contact through: http://www.tibet.dk/pktc or search Padma Karpo Translation Committee on the web.

CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I. HISTORY AND BACKGROUND 1. Roots of the Tibetan Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The general Tibetan perspective . . . . . . . . . . . Western versus Tibetan perspective . . . . . . . . . An alternative Tibetan perspective . . . . . . . . . . Another perspective: a copy of Sanskrit? . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. The History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Creation of the new language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The success of the new language following its introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The language is revised but the original definition does not change . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13 13 13 15 18 27 29 30 30

2. The Three Revisions of the Tibetan Language . . . . . I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. The History Surrounding the Revisions . . . . . . . The early spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45 45 48 48

i

42 43

ii

CONTENTS

The end of the early spread and the period of darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 The later spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 III. The Need for The Revisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 IV. Old and New Orthography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 V. The Changes Made in the Revisions . . . . . . . . . . 74 The First Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 The Second Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Changes to the way of writing out words . . . . . 77 The writing of re-suffixed letter da was dropped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 The writing of suffixed achung was dropped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 The way of writing certain groups of words was altered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 The Third Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

+-

7-

3. Studying Tibetan Grammar: Traditions, Methods, and Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 I. Lines of Thought and Main Figures in Tibetan Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Thumi and his legacy: the eight root ùhåstras of grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Subsequent figures and their contributions . . . 94 Situ Rinpoche’s lineage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 II. How Tibetan Grammar is Studied . . . . . . . . . . 110 III. The Tibetan Texts Included Here . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Thumi’s ùhåstras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Commentaries on Thumi’s ùhåstras . . . . . . . . 120 Two texts at the beginner’s level . . . . . . . . 121 Two texts at the intermediate level . . . . . . . 124

CONTENTS

A piece of Situ’s Great Commentary at the hardest level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pure Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Other Sources that are Important in Learning Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

iii

128 129 130 130

II. MINISTER THUMI SAÎBHOÛA’S DEFINING TREATISE “The Root of Grammar, The Thirty” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

III. TRANSLATOR’S EXPLANATION OF GRAMMAR USING THE THIRTY AS A BASIS 1. The Preface of The Thirty, The Second Grammar’s Good Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 I. The Title and Position of The Grammar . . . . . 153 The meaning of the word “Grammar” in the title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 The meaning of the word “Root” in the title . 157 The meaning of the words “The Thirty” in the title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 II. The Translator’s Homage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 III. The Expression of Worship, that is, The Homages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 IV. The Declaration of Composition . . . . . . . . . . . 168 2. Authenticating the Treatise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

iv

CONTENTS

3. Overview of the Forms of Tibetan Language . . . . . . 177 I. Structure and Meaning: Letters, Names, Accessories, Phrases, and Expressions . . . . . . . . . 177 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Letters defined as part of the lettering set . 191 Letters defined within names and accessories 192 Letters defined within gender categories . . 194 Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 The term “name” distinguishes the type of morpheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Names and name-equivalents . . . . . . . . . . . 198 The unique construction system of names and its far-reaching consequences . . . . . 199 Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 General function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 General categories and specific types . . . . . 201 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 Accessories have no meaning of themselves 205 The relationship between names and accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Importance of studying the accessories . . . 209 Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Phrases and Phrase Equivalents . . . . . . . . . 211 Types of Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 About Names, Phrases, and Words . . . . . . 213 Importance of Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 II. Composition: Tshegs, Intertshegs, and Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Tsheg delimiters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

CONTENTS

Intertshegs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Parsing Tibetan Compositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

v

225 226 232 236

4. Letters Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 The primacy of sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Definitions of letters in the Sanskrit and Tibetan grammars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 II. Letters of the Lettering Set Defined . . . . . . . . . 242 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 Letters, vowels, and consonants . . . . . . . . . 242 Further definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Thumi’s definition of the Tibetan lettering set 248 Number of vowels and consonants . . . . . . 248 Meaning of vowels and consonants . . . . . . 249 Written marks and names of the vowels . . 250 Sanskrit vowels in Tibetan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Written marks and names of the consonants 254 Difficulties with Thumi’s definition . . . . . . . . 261 The difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 The vowels in general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Situ’s in-depth analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 This author’s offering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Mistaken definition of the vowels in the current Western way of explanation . . . 273 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 III. Letters Defined as Parts of Names . . . . . . . . . . 277 Introduction to the Tibetan system of letters in names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

vi

CONTENTS

Two principles control the construction of grammatical names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Name construction using consonants in three positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 Name spelling following letter gender . 278 Outcome: the set of names is pre-defined and fixed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 More than just the spelling of names . . . . . 279 The construction principles relate to names only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 Consonant letters are being defined not vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 Suffix letters are the basis of the exposition 282 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Definition of the three types of consonant . . . 284 Definition of suffixes and re-suffixes . . . . . . . . 285 Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Re-suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 Definition of prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 Definition of name-bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Terminology of name-bases . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Simple consonant name-bases . . . . . . . . . . 291 Compound consonant name-bases . . . . . . 292 Compound consonant name-bases letters defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 Compound consonants with super-fixes defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Compound consonants with sub-fixes defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Compound consonants with both super- and sub-fixes defined . . . . . . . 297

CONTENTS

vii

Compound consonants with sub-sub-fixes defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Table of the native-Tibetan compound name-base letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 IV. Letters Defined in Transliteration . . . . . . . . . . 300 From Sanskrit into Tibetan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 System for representing the vowels of Sanskrit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 System for representing the consonants of Sanskrit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 Numerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 From Tibetan into English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 From Tibetan into other languages . . . . . . . . 319 5. Grammatical Names Defined and Used . . . . . . . . . . I. Names Based on Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The name-base is prime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The name-base requires a suffix to be a name Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appearance in old and new orthography . . Effect of the old and new ways of writing on names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The name-base receives prefixes and suffixes . Vowels in names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Construction principles and their effects . . . . II. Names as the Basis of Expression . . . . . . . . . . . Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How names function in the language . . . . . . . Names as naming primitives . . . . . . . . . . . Names as nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

321 321 322 322 322 323 325 327 330 331 335 335 335 335 337

viii

CONTENTS

Names as other parts of speech . . . . . . . . . 342 Names and phrase helpers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 The style of language based on names . . . . . . . 344 No morphological change . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 Two difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 Are names and other intertshegs syllables? . . . . 355 6. The Tibetan System of Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . I. Phonology of the Letters of the Lettering Set . Production place, producer, and effort of the letters defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Production place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Producer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inner effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Outer effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Definition of the Sanskrit and Tibetan consonant letters based on production place, producer, and effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General description of the arrangement of the consonant sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sections (Skt. varga, Tib. sde) . . . . . . Individual letter order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Detailed description of the arrangement of the consonant sets . . The contact consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . Slight contact, fricative-aspirate opened, and closed consonants . . . . .

Zè-

361 361 364 365 366 367 367 368 373

371 379 379 380 380 381 381 389

CONTENTS

Definition of the Tibetan consonant letters according to the Application of Gender Signs ................................... Explanation of how to articulate the letters based on their definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The contact consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The remaining consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . The vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary of the pronunciation of vowels and consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Pronunciation in practice, letters and words . . Learning to pronounce Tibetan letters . . . . . Learning to pronounce Tibetan words . . . . . Ensuring correct pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . Navigating the bits: an aid to correct pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Syllables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homonyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is Tibetan language tonal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. A Complete Presentation of Accessories Part I: Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. The importance of the accessories . . . . . . . . . . II. Three categories of accessory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Establishing their names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phrase Linkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phrase Ornaments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phrase Helpers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Organizing them for study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Returning to The Thirty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

394 400 401 409 415 419 420 421 424 429 431 435 435 438 439 442

445 445 449 449 450 453 455 458 459

x

CONTENTS

8. A Complete Presentation of Accessories Part II: Phrase Linkers Classified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Types of function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Types of phrase linker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dependent and independent linkers . . . . . . . . Dependent linkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Independent linkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case and non-case linkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. A Complete Presentation of Accessories Part III: Cases and Their Circumstances, Case Linkers From The Thirty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. The Circumstances of the Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . Nomenclature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Types of case circumstance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modes of application of the case circumstances The four sets of case circumstances . . . . . . . . The la-equivalents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The system of harmony, the I possessing case connectors . . . . . . . . . . . The source case connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . The calling case linkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. The Meanings of the Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The first case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The second case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The third case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The fourth case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The fifth case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The sixth case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The seventh case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The eighth case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

>ÜÍ

463 464 472 472 475 479 480

483 486 486 493 494 494 494 496 499 500 502 502 503 507 512 515 518 520 522

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xi

III. Differentiating the Second, Fourth, and Seventh Case Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524 10. A Complete Presentation of Accessories Part IV: Phrase Linkers and Phrase Ornaments: All of the Accessories Defined in The Thirty . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Dependent Linkers Defined in The Thirty . . . . . Concluders, Completing Words, Coupled Concluders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The la-equivalents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . as the sign of a conditional statement . . . as a boundary continuative . . . . . . . . . . . . Linkers possessing i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................ The ornaments The continuatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Boundary continuatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Declaration continuatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Continuatives leading on to further meaning The separation-inclusion linkers . . . . . . . . . . . II. Independent Linkers Defined in The Thirty . . . . and source linkers . . . . . . . . . . . . The Terms of calling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... The segregator and highlighter multi-purpose linker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The The term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Terms of the owner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The term of negation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

,:-

`$-7$-8$-

,ë- " 0ëthree letters connect to give a name

@,- + 0ë- " @,-0ë-

two letters a name and an accessory connect to give concatenate to give a an accessory phrase

iii. Letters Defined Within Gender Categories Letters are also defined as having gender. This is not mentioned at all in The Thirty; it is the subject of Thumi’s treatise called Application of Gender Signs. It is not just that letters have gender. Rather, separate sets of gender are defined for each of the three types of letter used in name construction. The gender of a letter as defined for each location has its own set of effects. In general, letter gender affects pronunciation of the letters themselves and also of the names that they are part of. This is taken up further in the chapter on pronunciation where the initial section of Gender Signs and Situ’s Great Commentary to that section are presented. The letter-gender rules determine which spellings of a name are acceptable and which not because of determining which letters can be collocated and which not. It is just this, taken with the various other definitions of how a name is constructed, that determines the fixed, pre-defined set of name morphemes mentioned in the overview section. The lettergender rules not only operate within a name to determine which spellings are acceptable but they also operate across the boundary between the end of a name and the beginning of an accessory to determine which accessories can be written after which names

OVERVIEW OF FORMS OF THE LANGUAGE

195

and which not. This cross-boundary gender effect then results in the unique Tibetan system of groups of accessories made up of morphemes with exactly the same function but different spellings; the accessory with the spelling that will allow correct gender matching with the ending of the name in front of it has to be used and not one of the others. These various matters related to letter gender are treated more fully as the text proceeds. In addition to the above, letter gender has significant effects on the operation of verbs.

3. Names The Tibetan term for grammatical names is term has two usages in the language:

0Ü$- (ming).

The

1) It is used in exactly the same way as the English word “name” to mean the name of something, as in “his name” or “her name” or “its name” or “the name of the substance” or “a name that can be applied”, etcetera. For “My name is Tashi”. To example, distinguish this meaning, I sometimes call them “common names”.

$7Ü-0Ü$-/g-;ÜèÍ

>ëÍ

In other words, he is saying that there are the four vowels with exhibiting marks that were defined by Thumi and there is, “a” (he does not directly call it a empirically speaking, an vowel) vowel sound present in the language which goes without use of a mark to exhibit its function. Although some grammarians would not like to say it that way, it is an accurate statement of how the Tibetan language is observed and is carefully made to avoid contradicting what Thumi wrote.

>-

184

The Fine Explanation Great Living Tree, page 649.

185

0Ü-#è-

>Ü-

In other words, the style of pronunciation of each of the vowels is shown by the shape and positioning of the vowel signs themselves—a little known fact, even amongst Tibetans. But more than that, even the absence of vowel sign is part of the scheme, since the style of pronunciation of the basic sound a is unmodified (straight) and hence needs no indication! And, if you take it a step further, though I have never heard it said anywhere else, you have to wonder, was Thumi even more clever than clever? The Sanskrit system makes it abundantly clear that the root vowel “a” is not only the root vowel but in fact the basic sound

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that is the root of any sound that could be produced. Because of this, the a vowel figures prominently in all Indian religious systems including Buddhism as the primordial sound that is the symbol of the uncreated. In Buddhism it becomes equated with emptiness. Perhaps Thumi was so clever that he made the basic vowel sound not apparent in written form at all, as drawn along by (not hidden inside!) the consonants, in deference to this primordial quality and especially of Buddhist emptiness, that it is such an emblem of? True or not true, when I look personally at what he created, like Situ Rinpoche, I have to say that Thumi’s creation and definition of it is very amazing. It is noteworthy that in Sanskrit, consonants are consonants and vowels are vowels but in Tibetan, the pronunciation of the root vowel a is not found in a discrete vowel but in the consonant achen. Is the achen defined as a vowel? No, it is letter defined as a consonant and that definition does not change. Some Tibetan grammarians maintain that the vowel “a” is hidden and present in all consonants. Others maintain that is not part of any of the consonants but that consonants can only be pronounced by adding a vowel sound following the consonant (like Sanskrit). Others, like Situ, maintain that it is neither hidden in the consonants nor added to the consonants like Sanskrit but comes along because of the vowels. Nonetheless, all grammarians agree that, if you ask the question, where is the basic “a” vowel to be found, the answer is that it is discovered in the pronunciation of the achen consonant and that consonant is defined to have a pronunciation that provides the basis for (but is not the same as) the root Sanskrit vowel “a”.

>-

>-

>-

The commentaries to The Thirty say that “the Tibetan system of letters has four explicitly written signs to indicate the function

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of the Sanskrit åli”. However, there are sixteen vowels in the Sanskrit åli (string of letter starting with “a”, that is, the vowels) so how can four Tibetan marks represent the Sanskrit vowel set? Actually, it goes very smoothly as with everything else where Sanskrit needs to be incorporated into Tibetan. The first six vowels of the Sanskrit set are the three short forms a, i, u and the three longer forms å, ë, ý of the same which are obtained by doubling the length of sound of each (according to and as we have Sanskrit grammar). Tibetan uses already said, to account for first three base Sanskrit vowels. Tibetan then adds the achung consonant which is effectively a short achen consonant, to each of those thus adding one more length of sound to obtain the longer vowels. The achung is and . Note how always written as a sub-fix as follows: the “u” vowel is written below the achung and is an upside down version of the Sanskrit mark for the same. This system of using a sub-fixed achung is not used in native Tibetan script but is used specifically to represent the long vowels of Sanskrit.

>- >Ü-

>ß-

7-

>¡- >¡Ü-

>Ø-

The next four vowels of Sanskrit are the short forms ôi and ìi and their longer forms õi, and íi respectively. Tibetan incorporates their pronunciation exactly and writes the short forms as and and the long forms as and as described in the section on transliteration.

:Þ-

9¡Þ-

9Þ-

:¡Þ-

The next four Sanskrit vowels are the diphthongs. The short forms are e and o and the longer forms ai and au. The short forms are the remaining vowels of the native Tibetan alphabet and respectively. The and are indicated with the signs long forms are incorporated as needed and are written using the

>è-

>ë-

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doubled vowel marks as is done in the Sanskrit system: and for au.

>í-

>ê- for ai

The remaining two Sanskrit vowels are incorporated as needed. They transliterated into Tibetan using the same glyphs as Sanskrit but are written as open circles instead of solid diafor aê. monds. For example, in for raî and in

9î-

>ï

5. Summary of the articulation of vowels and consonants The nett result of the system that defines the vowels and consonants through their pronunciation is a set of consonants and vowels that are uniquely Tibetan. At the same time, since the underlying system of definition is in common with the Sanskrit system, the entire Sanskrit lettering set can be included in Tibetan. Moreover, because of the closeness of definition, the Sanskrit system can be included as part of the Tibetan set on demand, easily, and seamlessly. To go with this system of pronunciation that allows full inclusion of Sanskrit into Tibetan, Thumi developed a complete set of written marks for representing Sanskrit with Tibetan letters. Again, the way he did it allowed for perfect inclusion of Sanskrit into Tibetan as needed. The way to write these letters is given in the section on transliteration into Sanskrit at the end of the chapter on the definition of letters; this chapter on pronunciation gives complete detail on how to pronounce them. When you understand the layout of both systems you see that they are very similar but that the Sanskrit system is more regular and the Tibetan system less so. My åchårya friends in India who are experts in both languages always say, with some obvious wish

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that it were not so, that the Tibetan system is not scientific, at least compared to the Sanskrit one. When I look through all of the details and take the overall effect into account too, it makes me think that Thumi was imposing order as best he could on a pre-existing system. It looks as though he regularized matters as best he could so that the Sanskrit would be fully accommodated but at the same time had to keep some things from an earlier system that just could not be thrown out or moved around. Why wouldn’t he have put the Sanskrit semi-vowels together and in their Sanskrit order especially given that there is no obvious reason for the placement of separately? Why would he not have put the unique Tibetan sibilants with the Sanskrit ones? If there was a pre-existing written language and if there were a substantial number of (Bonpo) texts in that language then, even if few could read or understand them, there could have been constraints that he would had to follow so as not to eliminate the continuity of that system all together. This is only speculation. However, given the extraordinary amount of regularity that does exist between Sanskrit and Tibetan, the irregularities really stand out. It does suggest quite strongly that the alternative history (page 22) of the development of the language may have been correct.

4-

II. Pronunciation in Practice, Letters and Words Once the letters of any language are defined, there has to be a practical way of learning and using them. In The Thirty, Thumi begins by defining letters and the words built up from them and concludes with practical advice about how to use them. As part of the conclusion, he explains what he considers to be the

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correct sequence for learning the language. He says that there are two main steps and gives the first as learning to read: “Persons wanting to put effort into a discipline First must learn the tones then The threefold prefixes, name-bases, and suffixes Will be their training for reading.” In other words, he says this. “Anyone who wants to undertake some kind of study first has to learn to read. The real training in reading is learning how to read words, which involves understanding how they are put together from their constituent parts of prefixes, names-bases, and suffixes and reading them out accordingly. However, before that training can be done it is first necessary to learn to recognize and pronounce the letters that make up the words”. Thus, learning to read is the subject of this second main section of the chapter. It is presented, just as Thumi says it should be, on the basis of first learning to pronounce the letters of the language then learning to read the structures made from those letters.

1. Learning to pronounce Tibetan letters When a Tibetan person learns the letters, they do not focus on learning each vowel and consonant then jump to learning words the way that is done by native English speakers. A Tibetan of course does learn the vowels and consonants but they do not it by just specifically learning the vowels and consonants as the individual members of a complete alphabet the way that an English-speaker youngster does. The reason for this is that spoken English uses the vowels and consonants themselves as

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the letters that make up the spoken word but Tibetan does not. Spoken Tibetan starts with a very extensive lettering set made up of the smaller set of bare consonants and the larger set of compound consonants. This very extensive lettering set is none other than the complete set of name-base letters described in a previous chapter. Spoken Tibetan moves on to putting this complete array of consonants—bare and compound—not with one vowel but with all the vowels and that makes its spoken lettering set the complete array of all the consonants, bare and compound, spoken with each of the vowels. The system of learning to speak letters in Tibetan is the natural result of how the words of the language are defined. As we have seen, the main pronounced letter of every Tibetan word and generally the only letter in any word to carry a vowel is the name-base letter itself. Thus, when the letters of the language are defined, they are defined as the vowels and consonants in the way shown in the first half of this chapter. However, when the letters of the language are learned for the purpose of speaking, they are learned as the whole range of letters that form the basic spoken unit in a word. Of course, in order to learn this range of letters, the pronunciations of the individual vowels and consonants must be learned in accordance with their definitions but they are learned as a step in learning to pronounce the complete set of name-bases. All this happens for the simple reason that the set of letters called name-bases contains all of the spoken letters of the Tibetan language. Thus, in the quote given above, Thumi says a person has to start , nga.ro.’don. by learning how to enunciate the tones ( tshul) which is the standard way of referring to this Tibetan system of learning to recognize and pronounce the complete set

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of name-bases as the actual way of learning the letters of the language. Once a person knows them, they can easily move to the main training in reading which is learning to recognize the prefixes, name-bases, and suffixes in any intertsheg then learning how to pronounce those intertshegs on the basis of the prefixes, name-bases, and suffixes seen in them. There is a tried and true Tibetan system for learning the complete lettering set. In it, each bare consonant letter is read aloud from a book, etcetera, with each of the four vowels added in turn. Then the same process is followed with the compound klog.thabs) to help with consonants. There are readers ( this. They contain a complete listing of all of the combinations of consonants and vowels used as name-base letters and the student reads them out, one by one, cycling through all of the combinations. The letters are usually written large both for easy recognition and to show the forms of the letters clearly as examples for writing practice. A primer will start out like this showing each of the letters of each section of the bare consonants one by one and with each of the four vowels added in turn. After the thirty bare consonants have been listed with all of the vowels, the compound consonants will be given in their alphabetical order, starting like this and going on until every possibility is exhausted. In cases where there were no books, a Tibetan, in old times usually a monk or nun, who knew their letters would be assigned to teach all of this to the students just orally. Drawings in sand and with chalk were made or the letters of whatever books were available were used as examples. In modern Tibetan schools, books are available and the teachers use blackboards, etcetera. However, the system of learning is the same. Just as I was taught my abc’s in English, so Tibetans are taught their

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