Tibetan practice books

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Täpa
Posts: 47
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2021 6:10 pm

Tibetan practice books

Post by Täpa »

Good morning,

Since last year i am following Tibetan class. I like the classes, only i think the teaching material is constantly going beyond my vocabulary and understanding. And therefore i do not memorize a lot.
What i remember from my school period at foreign language classes, is that i had books with handy sentences to practice, with certain kind of subjects, with the answers in the back or even explanation. This worked very well in my experience.
Are there these kinds of books for practicing Tibetan?

I do have the book Translating Buddhism from Tibetan, but to me this book does not give enough practice examples. For me it would work best if i can practice 10 sentences on kitchen stuff and than 10 sentences on doing groceries or something.

Anybody some ideas or suggestions on what to do? Thank you very much.
Punya
Posts: 1437
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:50 pm

Re: Tibetan practice books

Post by Punya »

Täpa wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:23 am Good morning,

Anybody some ideas or suggestions on what to do?
I expect there are other options, but one I came across recently is Colloquial Tibetan by Jonathon Samuels, which is published by Routledge. There's some intro and then the later chapters are themed around different topics. Each chapter begins with a conversation in Tibetan (with translations) and then introduces relevant vocabulary and different 'language points' ie grammar and the like and then has exercises to test your knowledge.

The book is not cheap to buy, but you can download the associated audio without having to pay extra. I found Abe Books gives you a list of different resellers, so you might be able to find one that ships within your country for free.

I hope this helps.
We abide nowhere. We possess nothing.
~Chatral Rinpoche
SilenceMonkey
Posts: 1448
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 9:54 am

Re: Tibetan practice books

Post by SilenceMonkey »

For colloquial material, I think Fransiska Oertle's book is very good. But only the 1st volume out of 4 is published. If you want the others, send a PM. The author gave permission to distribute the rough versions because it will take a while to publish.

Other than that, the Esukhia books are really the best, in my opinion. But there's not a word of English in them. They seem to have updated their website a few times in the past few years, but here's the link for the current selection from Esukhia. All free (donation).

http://esukhia.online/textbooks/

You'll find a lot of example sentences here as well as Franziska's books. Another one with example sentences would be Goldstein's dictionaries. I've been told the word usage is not often accurate, albeit close. But it's hard to communicate with higher levels of language (such as what's in the dictionary), as so many (non-monastic) tibetans don't have a higher level of education.
Täpa
Posts: 47
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2021 6:10 pm

Re: Tibetan practice books

Post by Täpa »

Punya wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 11:54 pm
Täpa wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:23 am Good morning,

Anybody some ideas or suggestions on what to do?
I expect there are other options, but one I came across recently is Colloquial Tibetan by Jonathon Samuels, which is published by Routledge. There's some intro and then the later chapters are themed around different topics. Each chapter begins with a conversation in Tibetan (with translations) and then introduces relevant vocabulary and different 'language points' ie grammar and the like and then has exercises to test your knowledge.

The book is not cheap to buy, but you can download the associated audio without having to pay extra. I found Abe Books gives you a list of different resellers, so you might be able to find one that ships within your country for free.

I hope this helps.
Thanks for your input! Unfortunately I cannot find a site where i can see some example pages..
Punya
Posts: 1437
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:50 pm

Re: Tibetan practice books

Post by Punya »

Täpa wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:23 am
Thanks for your input! Unfortunately I cannot find a site where i can see some example pages..
You can view the index at amazon.com using their Look Inside function. I've also PM'd you.
We abide nowhere. We possess nothing.
~Chatral Rinpoche
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