Tibetic languages
The Tibetic languages are a cluster of Tibeto-Burman languages descended from Old Tibetan, spoken across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas in Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Classical Tibetan is a major regional literary language, particularly for its use in Buddhist literature.
Tibetic languages are spoken by some 6 million people.
With the worldwide spread of Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan language has spread into the western world and can be found in many Buddhist publications and prayer materials; with some western students learning the language for translation of Tibetan texts. Outside Lhasa itself, Lhasa Tibetan is spoken by approximately 200,000 exile speakers who have moved from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries. Tibetan is also spoken by groups of ethnic minorities in Tibet who have lived in close proximity to Tibetans for centuries, but nevertheless retain their own languages and cultures.
Although some of the Qiang peoples of Kham are classified by China as ethnic Tibetans, the Qiangic languages are not Tibetic, but rather form their own branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family.
Classical Tibetan was not a tonal language, but some varieties such as Central and Khams Tibetan have developed tone registers. Amdo and Ladakhi-Balti are without tone. Tibetic morphology can generally be described as agglutinative.
Languages
Nicolas Tournadre describes the language situation of Tibetan as follows:The 25 languages include a dozen major dialect clusters:
and another dozen minor clusters or single dialects, mostly spoken by a few hundred to a few thousand people:
In addition, there is Baima, which retains an apparent Qiangic substratum, and has multiple layers of borrowing from Amdo, Khams, and Zhongu, but does not correspond to any established branch of Tibetic. The more divergent dialects such as this are spoken in the north and east near the Qiangic and Rgyalrongic languages, and some, such as Khalong, may also be due to language shift.
The Tibetic languages used for broadcasting within China are Standard Tibetan, Khams and Amdo.
Origins
Marius Zemp hypothesizes that Tibetan originated as a pidgin with the West Himalayish language Zhangzhung as its superstratum, and Rgyalrongic as its substratum. Similarly, Tamangic also has a West Himalayish superstratum, but its substratum is derived from a different Sino-Tibetan branch.Classification
Tournadre (2014)
Tournadre classifies the Tibetic languages as follows.- North-Western: Ladakhi, Zangskari, Balti, Purki
- Western: Spiti, Garzha, Khunu, Jad
- Central: Ü, Tsang, Phenpo, Lhokha, Tö, Kongpo
- South-Western: Sherpa and Jirel; other languages/dialects along the Sino-Nepalese border: Humla, Mugu, Dolpo, Lo-ke, Nubri, Tsum, Langtang, Kyirong, Yolmo, Gyalsumdo, Kagate, Lhomi, Walung, and Tokpe Gola.
- Southern: Dzongkha, Drengjong, Tsamang, Dhromo Lakha, Dur Brokkat, Mera Sakteng Brokpa-ke
- South-Eastern: Hor Nagchu, Hor Bachen, Yushu, Pembar, Rongdrak, Minyak, Dzayul, Derong-Jol, Chaktreng, Muli-Dappa, Semkyi Nyida; other Khams dialects
- *‘Northern route’ dialects: ‘Chamdo, Derge, and Kandze
- *‘Southern route’ dialects: Markham, Bathang, Lithang
- Eastern: Drugchu, Khöpokhok, Thewo, Chone, Baima, Sharkhok, Palkyi , and Zhongu; other Khams dialects
- North-Eastern: Amdo, gSerpa, Khalong
Tournadre (2005, 2008)
- Central Tibetan
- :The basis of Standard Tibetan that includes various Nepalese varieties
- Khams
- Amdo
- Dzongkha–Lhokä
- :Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Lakha, Naapa, Chocangaca, Brokkat, Brokpa and probably Groma
- Ladakhi–Balti
- :Ladakhi, Burig, Zangskari, Balti
- Lahuli–Spiti
- Kyirong–Kagate
- Sherpa–Jirel
- :Sherpa, Jirel
Tournadre adds Tseku and Khamba to Khams, and groups Thewo-Chone, Zhongu, Baima as an Eastern branch of Tibetic.
Bradley (1997)
According to Bradley, the languages cluster as follows :- Western Archaic Tibetan, including Ladakhi, Balti and Burig
- Amdo Tibetan
- Khams Tibetan
- Western Innovative Tibetan
- :Dialects of Upper Ladakh and Zanskar, of the Northwest Indian Border Area, and of Zanda County
- Central Tibetan
- :Most dialects of Ngari Prefecture in western Tibet, of the northern Nepalese border area in Nepal, Tsang dialects of Shigatse Prefecture, and Ü dialects. The basis of Standard Tibetan.
- Northern Tibetan
- :Dialects of Gêrzê, of Nagqu Prefecture in north-central Tibet, and of Nangqên County in South Qinghai
- Southern Tibetan
- :Groma language of Chumbi Valley in southern Tsang, Sikkimese in India, Sherpa and Jirel in Nepal, and various languages of Bhutan:
;Other
Some classifications group Khams and Amdo together as Eastern Tibetan. Some, like Tournadre, break up Central Tibetan. Phrases such as 'Central Tibetan' and 'Central Bodish' may or may not be synonymous: Southern Tibetan can be found as Southern Bodish, for example; 'Central Tibetan' may mean dBus or all dialects apart from Khams; Tibeto-Kanauri languages.
Writing systems
Most Tibetic languages are written in one of two Indic scripts. Standard Tibetan and most other Tibetic languages are written in the Tibetan script with a historically conservative orthography that helps unify the Tibetan-language area. Some other Tibetan languages are written in the related Devanagari script, which is also used to write Hindi, Nepali and many other languages. However, some Ladakhi and Balti speakers write with the Urdu script; this occurs almost exclusively in Pakistan. The Tibetan script fell out of use in Pakistani Baltistan hundreds of years ago upon the region's adoption of Islam. However, increased concern among Balti people for the preservation of their language and traditions, especially in the face of strong Punjabi cultural influence throughout Pakistan, has fostered renewed interest in reviving the Tibetan script and using it alongside the Arabic-Persian script. Many shops in Baltistan's capital Skardu in Pakistan's "Northern Areas" region have begun supplementing signs written in the Arabic-Persian script with signs written in the Tibetan script. Baltis see this initiative not as separatist but rather as part of an attempt to preserve the cultural aspects of their region which has shared a close history with neighbors like Kashmiris and Punjabis since the arrival of Islam in the region many centuries ago.Historical phonology
phonology is rather accurately rendered by the script. The finals were pronounced devoiced although they are written as voiced, the prefix letters assimilated their voicing to the root letters. The graphic combinations hr and lh represent voiceless and not necessarily aspirate correspondences to r and l respectively. The letter ' was pronounced as a voiced guttural fricative before vowels but as homorganic prenasalization before consonants. Whether the gigu verso had phonetic meaning or not remains controversial.For instance, Srongbtsan Sgampo would have been pronounced and 'babs would have been pronounced .
Already in the 9th century the process of cluster simplification, devoicing and tonogenesis had begun in the central dialects can be shown with Tibetan words transliterated in other languages, particularly Middle Chinese but also Uyghur.
The concurrence of the evidence indicated above enables us to form the following outline of the evolution of Tibetan. In the 9th century, as shown by the bilingual Tibetan–Chinese treaty of 821–822 found in front of Lhasa's Jokhang, the complex initial clusters had already been reduced, and the process of tonogenesis was likely well underway.
The next change took place in Tsang dialects: The ra-tags were altered into retroflex consonants, and the ya-tags became palatals.
Later on the superscribed letters and finals d and s disappeared, except in the east and west. It was at this stage that the language spread in Lahul and Spiti, where the superscribed letters were silent, the d and g finals were hardly heard, and as, os, us were ai, oi, ui. The words introduced from Tibet into the border languages at that time differ greatly from those introduced at an earlier period.
The other changes are more recent and restricted to Ü and Tsang. In Ü, the vowel sounds a, o, u have now mostly umlauted to ä, ö, ü when followed by the coronal sounds i, d, s, l and n. The same holds for Tsang with the exception of l which merely lengthens the vowel. The medials have become aspirate tenues with a low intonation, which also marks the words having a simple initial consonant; while the former aspirates and the complex initials simplified in speech are uttered with a high tone, shrill and rapidly.
Reconstruction
Proto-Tibetic
Proto-Tibetic, the hypothetical proto-language ancestral to the Tibetic languages, has been reconstructed by Tournadre. Proto-Tibetic is similar to, but not identical to, written Classical Literary Tibetan. The following phonological features are characteristic of Proto-Tibetic.- The prefixes
*s-, *d-/g-, *m-, and *b- , which have been retained from Proto-Tibeto-Burman. *s- is primarily used with animals and body parts, as well as *d-/*g- and *m-/*r-. - Palatalization of dental and alveolar consonants before y.
- Consonant change from lateral to dental position after /m/.
- Distinctive aspirated initial stops. This phenomenon is attested by alternating aspirated and non-aspirated consonants in Old Tibetan orthography. Examples include gcig ~ gchig ‘one’; phyin-chad ~ phyin-cad ‘from now on’; ci ~ chi ‘what’; and cu ~ chu ‘water’.
- *g-tɕik ‘one’
- *g-nyis ‘two’
- *g-su- ‘three’
- *b-ʑi ‘four’
- *l-ŋa ‘five’
- *d-ruk ‘six’
- *b-dun ‘seven’
- *b-rgyat ‘eight’
- *d-gu ‘nine’
- *b-tɕu ‘ten’
- *s-dik-pa ‘scorpion’
- *s-bal ‘frog’
- *s-tak ‘tiger’
- *s-b-rul ‘snake’
- *s-pra ‘monkey’
- *s-kra ‘hair’
- *s-nyiŋ ‘heart’
- *s-na ‘nose’
- *d-myik ‘eye’
- *m-go ‘head’
- *r-na ‘ear’
Pre-Tibetic
Some Pre-Tibetic reconstructions, along with reconstructed Proto-Tibetic forms and orthographic Classical Literary Tibetan, from Tournadre are listed below.
| Gloss | Pre-Tibetic | Proto-Tibetic | Classical Literary Tibetan |
| one | *g-tyik | *g-tɕik | gcig / gchig གཅིག་ / གཆིག |
| big | *tye | *tɕe | che ཆེ་ |
| ten | *b-tyu | *b-tɕu | bcu / bchu བཅུ་ / བཆུ་ |
| what | *tyi | *tɕi | ci / chi ཅི་ / ཆི་ |
| flesh | *sya | *ɕa | sha ཤ་ |
| know | *syes | *ɕes | shes ཤེས་ |
| wood | *sying | *ɕiŋ | shing ཤིང་ |
| to cut | *b-tsyat | *b-tɕat | bcad བཅད་ |
| spittle | *m-tsyil-ma | *m-tɕil-ma | mchil-ma མཆིལ་མ་ |
| liver | *m-tsin-pa | *m-tɕin-pa | mchin-pa མཆིན་པ |
| four | *b-lyi | *bʑi | bzhi བཞི་ |
| field | *lying | *ʑiŋ | zhing ཞིང་ |
| flea | *ldi | *ldʑi | lji ལྗི་, ‘ji ་འཇི་ |
| iron | *s-lak > *l-sak > *l-tsyak | *ltɕaks | lcags ལྕགས་ |
| arrow | *mda | mda’ མདའ་ | |
| to suppress | *bnans | *mnans | mnand |
| to listen | *bnyan | *nyan | mnyand |
| eye | *dmyik | dmyig དམྱིག་ ; mig | |
| flower | *mentok | men-tog མེན་ཏོག ; ་me-tog |