Reading Tibetan

Knowing the letters isn't enough. A Tibetan syllable stacks letters around a central root — and several of them are silent. This page teaches you to find the root and ignore the rest.

Why spelling and sound differ. Tibetan spelling was fixed in the 7th century and never updated. The pronunciation kept changing. So the letters you see are a photograph of how the word sounded 1,300 years ago — and modern speech has quietly dropped a lot of them.

English does the same thing. Knight was once said with the k and a throaty gh. We kept the spelling and lost the sounds. Tibetan is that, systematised.

The anatomy of a syllable

A Tibetan syllable can hold up to seven pieces. Only one is compulsory: the root letter. Everything else is optional, and much of it is silent.

prefixsilent

superscriptsilent, sits on top

ROOTalways present

subscripttucked below

vowelabove or below

suffixoften changes the vowel

2nd suffixsilent

The hard part for a beginner is that the root isn't always the first letter you see. བདག starts with བ, but the root is ད — and the word is said dak, not "badak".

Finding the root letter

Rule 1 — Only one letter can take a vowel

If you see a vowel mark, the letter it sits on is the root (or the top of the root's stack). That's your fastest clue.

Rule 2 — Stacked letters belong together

Letters written above or below another letter are attachments, not separate sounds. The one in the middle of the stack is the root.

Rule 3 — Only five letters can be prefixes

ག ད བ མ འ. If a syllable starts with one of these and more letters follow, it's probably a silent prefix. Learn these five and most ambiguity disappears.

The five prefixes

Written, never pronounced. They exist because they once were pronounced, and because they change the tone of what follows.

The ten suffixes

These matter more than prefixes, because several of them change the vowel even when the suffix itself is silent. This is the single biggest source of "why doesn't that sound like it's spelled?"

The vowel-bending rule. Four suffixes — ད, ན, ལ, ས — pull the vowel forward in your mouth:

a → e · o → ö · u → ü

It's the same shift that turns English foot into feet, or German Buch into Bücher. This is why དོན don is said dön, and ཡུལ yul is said yü.

Letters that stack

Tibetan writes some letters on top of or underneath others. A stack is still one syllable with one root.

Superscripts — riding on top

Three letters can sit above a root: ར, ལ, ས. They are silent, but they raise the tone.

Subscripts — tucked underneath

Four letters can hang below a root. Unlike superscripts, these do change the sound — sometimes dramatically.

Reading real words

Every example below is a word from the Eight Verses. Click to take it apart.

Practise reading → See it in the verses