The Alphabet

Thirty consonants and four vowels. Learn these and you can sound out any Tibetan word — including every word in the Eight Verses.

Read this first. Tibetan writing is regular. Unlike English — where through, though and tough all end differently — a Tibetan letter says the same thing every time. The spelling looks complicated because it preserves sounds that stopped being pronounced centuries ago, but the rules for getting from spelling to sound are consistent. That's what this section teaches.

Two ideas before the letters

1 · Every consonant already contains an "a"

In English, k is a bare consonant — you can't say it alone without adding a vowel sound. In Tibetan, the letter ཀ is "ka". The vowel is built in.

So you only write a vowel mark when you want something other than "a". No mark means "a".

2 · Pitch matters as much as the consonant

Tibetan is tonal. Each letter carries either a high or low pitch, and that pitch is part of the word — change it and you've said something else.

This is why ཀ (ka, high) and ག (ga, low) feel similar to an English ear. The consonants are close; the pitch is what separates them.

Don't worry about mastering tone now. Just notice the colour coding as you go — high letters are marked one way, low letters another, and your ear will start to group them.

Three kinds of sound English doesn't distinguish

Puff / no puff

Hold your palm in front of your mouth. Say skip — no puff. Say kite — puff. English treats these as the same letter. Tibetan treats them as two.

Wylie "h" means breath

When you see kh, th, ph, ch in the spelling column, the h means "add a puff of air." It never means the th of think or the ph of phone.

Wylie "c" is always "ch"

ཅ is written ca in Wylie but said cha. This trips up nearly every beginner — ཐམས་ཅད thams cad is said tamche, not "tams kad".

The thirty consonants

Traditionally learned in eight family groups, organised by where in your mouth the sound is made. Click any letter for detail.

high tone · low tone

The vowels

Four marks. Three sit above the letter, one below. Each one replaces the built-in "a".

Try it. You now know enough to read སེམས. The root is ས (sa), the mark above it is ེ (e), so far "se". The མ adds an m. The final ས is silent. The word is sem — mind.

Why that last ས is silent, and how to tell which letter is the root, is what the Reading Tibetan section covers.

Next: Reading Tibetan → Drill the alphabet