Tibetan
The Tibetan language is a member of the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan
family of languages, where 'Sino-' refers to the Chinese languages; and 'Tibetan'
refers to several related languages found mainly in Tibet, Burma, and nearby
territories. Over 1 million people speak Tibetan, the majority of them living
in the Tibet autonomous region and other parts of China, but with sizeable numbers
of speakers in Nepal, Bhutan and India. Tibetan is written in a syllabary script
(each character stands for a syllable) based on the writing system of the ancient
Sanskrit language of India. Used in its present form since the 9th century,
this script was first developed as a means of translating the sacred Buddhist
texts that were being brought into Tibet from India.
The language as it is spoken today is called Colloquial Tibetan by Western scholars.
There are four major dialects, and people from widely separated regions may
have trouble understanding each other. The spoken standard is the dialect spoken
in the region around the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. A standard written form also
exists, which is referred to as Modern Literary Tibetan.
Tibetan tends to be monosyllabic and to lack inflection. Word order is, therefore,
very important. Tibetan is also tonal, having six tones in all: short high,
long high, short low, long low, high falling, and low falling.
Sources:
Ethnologue
Encyclopedia.com
Dharma-Haven
Cuny
Brooklyn
Information on writing systems:
Geocities.com:
Brahmi descended scripts
omniglot.com
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Local Resources: