the drajyor macabre

[Yudron]

"sgra sbyor meanings "putting sounds together" and is the name of ChNN's transcripton system."

Oh, I was guessing perhaps it was a "joining with sound" practice.

It is a more general term than the name of ChNN's transcription system. It really just refers to phonetics in general. There are several different sgra sbyor texts up on TBRC and there are others not yet up that cover regional phonetics.

What treehuggingoctopus is referring to specifically is one of Rinpoche's texts explaining, as Malcolm mentioned, Rinpoche's phonetic, pinyin-based, transcription system.

Thank you for explaining this, I am not familiar with this genre. The only text I have been exposed to in Tibetan like this this is HH Dudjom Rinpoche's text (in his sung bum) about how to pronounce Sanskrit.

[treehuggingoctopus]

Well, after (an equivalent of) a sleepless night of listening to and reading closely Mantras and Invocations against the background of drayjor, it dawned on me that since ChNN speaks, chants and sings (an) Eastern Tibetan, the Drajyor book rules, which assume Standard Tibetan phonetics, need to be treated as a starting point which may need just the proper dialectic add-on to become fully operational.

I've found no paper that would discuss the phonological differences between Standard and Amdo/Eastern Tibetan. But I think I could risk positing a few very basic and frighteningly makeshift phonological rules.

1. when palatalized or followed by /i/, velar stops /k/ and /g/ as well as their palatalized and/or aspirated subvariants (including those that come in subscripts and superscripts) become alveolo-palatal affricates /t͡ɕ/ and /d͡ʑ/

2. in consonant clusters CCV in which the first consonant is voiced, the second one will also be voiced (I've found no exceptions to it yet, but this rule is almost certainly too broad to be true)

3. the final, syllable-ending consonant /r/ doesn't change the preceding vowel /a/ into /ɛ/. In other words, when preceded by a syllable-ending /r/, /a/ stays /a/

4. word-ending /k/ - and perhaps syllable-endng /k/ as well - change into a glottal stop /ʔ/

Please correct me if you can.

[Yudron]

Well, after (an equivalent of) a sleepless night of listening to and reading closely Mantras and Invocations against the background of drayjor, it dawned on me that since ChNN speaks, chants and sings (an) Eastern Tibetan, the Drajyor book rules, which assume Standard Tibetan phonetics, need to be treated as a starting point which may need just the proper dialectic add-on to become fully operational.

I've found no paper that would discuss the phonological differences between Standard and Amdo/Eastern Tibetan. But I think I could risk positing a few very basic and frighteningly makeshift phonological rules.

1. when palatalized or followed by /i/, velar stops /k/ and /g/ as well as their palatalized and/or aspirated subvariants (including those that come in subscripts and superscripts) become alveolo-palatal affricates /t͡ɕ/ and /d͡ʑ/

2. in consonant clusters CCV in which the first consonant is voiced, the second one will also be voiced (I've found no exceptions to it yet, but this rule is almost certainly too broad to be true)

3. the final, syllable-ending consonant /r/ doesn't change the preceding vowel /a/ into /ɛ/. In other words, when preceded by a syllable-ending /r/, /a/ stays /a/

4. word-ending /k/ - and perhaps syllable-endng /k/ as well - change into a glottal stop /ʔ/

Please correct me if you can.

There are many distinct dialects in Eastern Tibet, and sometimes Tibetans cannot understand each other. Tibet had no public education before the Chinese, so there were no unified standards.

[treehuggingoctopus]

I know. The makeshift rules above aren't of Eastern Tibetan - they are supposed to be of ChNN's Eastern Tibetan.