LANGUAGES

Chinese language

Being aware that Tibetan and Chinese Tibetology researchers are fluent in Chinese, I will try to publish as much as possible in simplified Chinese and will mainly use the Google translation function to do this. However, as I cannot guarantee it will be a reliable translation, please feel free to point out any errors so these can be corrected.

https://www.tibetanresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/SKMBT_C284e14102009470.pdf

https://www.tibetanresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/SKMBT_C284e14102009450.pdf

Tibetan language

In Western countries, Tibetan is generally written in a format referred to as the Wylie Standard System of Tibetan Transcription. This is the case in my thesis. However, I have had a longstanding interest in writing spoken Lhasa/central Tibetan and do this using the traditional Uchen (dbu can) Tibetan script. I realise this is a cultural leap for many Tibetans and more so for academics who maintain that written Tibetan must be expressed in Literary Tibetan. This can be either Classical Literary Tibetan or Modern Literary Tibetan.

In the 1990s, Professor Hu Tan of the China Centre for Tibetan Studies encouraged me to continue to explore the challenge of recording spoken Tibetan language in Uchen. As dialogue involves using the spoken language to express one’s thoughts, perhaps the time is now suitable for some written material (which up until now has always been presented in the non-spoken Literary Tibetan language) to be made more accessible to those who speak Tibetan but find the literary language difficult. Tibetologists from other parts of China where Tibetan is not spoken may appreciate the opportunity to improve their fluency by reading these written colloquial texts.

This page therefore has two separate sections:
[1] Uchen: The majority of the Uchen manuscripts (with the exception of my thesis) are in colloquial Tibetan.
[2] Wylie: A limited number of manuscripts are in the Wylie transliterated script.