Category: Language & Communication
1. The Alphabet. The Tibetan Alphabet was adapted from the Lañc̀ʽa (ལཱཉ་ཚ) form of the Indian letters by Tʽon-mi-sam-bho-ta (ཐོན་མི་སམ་བྷོ་ཏ) minister of king Sroṅ-tsan-gam-po (སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ་) about the year 632 (s. Köpp. II, 56). The Indian letters out of which the single T...
1. The Alphabet. The Tibetan Alphabet was adapted from the Lañc̀ʽa (ལཱཉ་ཚ) form of the Indian letters by Tʽon-mi-sam-bho-ta (ཐོན་མི་སམ་བྷོ་ཏ) minister of king Sroṅ-tsan-gam-po (...
2. CHAPTER I.11. Peculiarities of the Tibetan article. 1. What have been called Articles by Csoma and Schmidt, are a number of little affixes: པ་ བ་ མ་ པོ་ བོ་ མོ་, and some similar ones, wh...
3. CHAPTER II.14. The Number. The Plural is denoted by adding the word རྣམས་ nam, or, more rarely, དག་ dag (dʽag), ཚོ་, or a few other words, which originally were nouns with the common notio...
4. CHAPTER III.16. In the Tibetan language the Adjective is not formally distinguished from the Substantive, so that many nouns may be used one or the other way just as circumstances require....
5. CHAPTER IV.1 ༡ གཅིག་ c̀ig 2 ༢ གཉིས་ ñi(s) 3 ༣ གསུམ་ sum 4 ༤ བཞི་ z̀i 5 ༥ ལྔ་ ṅa 6 ༦ དྲུག་ W: ḍug, C: ḍhug 7 ༧ བདུན་ W: dun, C: dhṳn 8 ༨ བརྒྱད་ W: gyad, C: gyäʼ 9 ༩ དགུ་ gu 10 ༡༠ བཅུ་ c̀u,...
6. CHAPTER V.24. Personal Pronouns. First person: ང་ ṅa; ངེད་ ṅed, ṅĕʼ; ངོས་ ṅos (Ld.); ཁོ་བོ་ kʽo-wo, masc., and ཁོ་མོ་ kʽo-mo, fem.; བདག་ dag ‘self’—‘I’; Second person: ཁྱོད་ kʽyod (kʽyöʼ)...
7. CHAPTER VI.30. Introductory remarks. The Tibetan verbs must be regarded as denoting, not an action, or suffering, or condition of any subject, but merely a coming to pass, or, in other wor...
8. CHAPTER VII.1. Very few Primitive Adverbs occur; the most usual are: ད་ ‘now’, ནམ་ ‘when’, སང་ (books and CT) or ཐོ་རེ་ (WT) ‘to morrow’, and a few similar ones; ཡང་ ‘again’, and the two ne...
9. CHAPTER VIII.43. There are two kinds of Postpositions: 1. Simple Postpositions. These are the same that we know already as forming the cases (15). 2. Compound Postpositions, formed in the ma...
10. CHAPTER IX.44. The written language possesses very few, the spoken still fewer, Conjunctions, most of which are coordinative. The common word for ‘and’ is དང་ which we have seen above in t...
11. CHAPTER X.12. CHAPTER XI.46. Derivation of Substantives. As most of what belongs under this head has already been mentioned in 11. and 12. only the formation of abstract nouns remains to be spoken of. 1...
13. PART III.48. Arrangement of words. 1. The invariable rule is this: in a simple sentence all other words must precede the verb; in a compound one all the subordinate verbs in the form of...