More Tibetan pronunciation

[Punya]

They are both alveolar and aspirated. The difference is that ཚ་ is an aspirated "ts" sound, whereas ཐ་ is an aspirated "t" sound.

Oops. I meant aspirated. I've heard various pronunciations, but thanks I'll work with this.

[MiphamFan]

You can try pronouncing English "pizza" and "Pete's house" to hear the difference between /ts/ and aspirated /tsh/.

[SilenceMonkey]

You guys are making this way too complicated. Just work with someone virtually or in person. All this explanation is very abstract and academic. That’s not how people actually learn how to speak.

It's how I learned how to speak!

It seems I stand corrected! I guess linguistics just makes me grumpy.

You can try pronouncing English "pizza" and "Pete's house" to hear the difference between /ts/ and aspirated /tsh/.

That’s actually a good one!

[Punya]

I think idiosyncratic transcription systems are fine, but they should try to have a table linking it back to IPA at the very least. Many textbooks don't do this though.

So now I'm looking for the most accurate IPA equivalents for the Tibetan consonants. After some searches I found this list:

Letter/Name/IPA
ཀ ka /ka/
ཁ Ka /kʰa̤/
ག ga /ɡa/
ང n̰a /ŋa/
ཅ ca /tɕa/
ཆ Ca /tɕʰa̤/
ཇ ja /dʑa/
ཉ ña /ɲa/
ཏ ta /ta/
ཐ Ta /tʰa̤/
ད da /da/
ན na /na/
པ pa /pa/
ཕ Pa /pʰa̤/
བ ba /ba/
མ ma /ma/
ཙ tsa /tsa/
ཚ TSa /tsʰa̤/
ཛ dza /dza/
ཝ wa /wa/
ཞ ža /ʒa/
ཟ za /za/
འ 'a /ʔ̬a/
ཡ ya /ja/
ར ra /ra/
ལ la /la/
ཤ ša /ʃa/
ས sa /sa/
ཧ ha /ha̤/
ཨ a /a/

Source: https://polyglotclub.com/wiki/Language/ ... Consonants

Is this accurate or is there a better source either online or elsewhere?

[MiphamFan]

The actual IPA values in the list are generally accurate, except that they give the voiced versions, whereas Lhasa Tibetan has low tone aspirated.

Like ཅ ca /tɕa/ should be this symbol, this is accurate, it is like the same sound in Japanese ち, NOT the same as English or even Sanskrit /tʃ/ in "chair" "Chandra" etc. This is not about aspiration, but the quality of consonant.

However, this is not that important. People can still understand you if you pronounce it like /tʃ/.

One inaccuracy is that ཤ should be /ɕ/, same consonant as pinyin "X" or Japanese し. Again this is not a major point though.

[Punya]

The actual IPA values in the list are generally accurate, except that they give the voiced versions, whereas Lhasa Tibetan has low tone aspirated.

Like ཅ ca /tɕa/ should be this symbol, this is accurate, it is like the same sound in Japanese ち, NOT the same as English or even Sanskrit /tʃ/ in "chair" "Chandra" etc. This is not about aspiration, but the quality of consonant.

However, this is not that important. People can still understand you if you pronounce it like /tʃ/.

One inaccuracy is that ཤ should be /ɕ/, same consonant as pinyin "X" or Japanese し. Again this is not a major point though.

Thanks for checking this. As ཅ ca /tɕa is exactly what is written in the list, what tells you that they are giving the voiced versions? Could you give an example of how the low tone aspirated version is written?

[MiphamFan]

/tɕʰa/ low tone aspirated.

What tells me they are giving the voiced versions is they write /b/ /d/ /g/ etc instead of having the aspirated versions.

It is the same consonant in Chinese "qi", indicated by Pinyin Q.

[Punya]

/tɕʰa/ low tone aspirated.

What tells me they are giving the voiced versions is they write /b/ /d/ /g/ etc instead of having the aspirated versions.

It is the same consonant in Chinese "qi", indicated by Pinyin Q.

[Punya]

I'm adding a link here to another recent DW discussion about Tibetan pronunciation https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?p=659271 , which wasn't posted in the Language forum and might be hard to find in the future. It also contains some useful resources and comments.

[Punya]

I'd be interested to know what the view is on the Tibetan pronunciation in the sound files accompanying this Quizlet set https://quizlet.com/class/2968854/. It's the only set I've come across that includes sound. Is the pronunciation close to the central Tibetan dialect or have other influences crept in?

[MiphamFan]

I'd be interested to know what the view is on the Tibetan pronunciation in the sound files accompanying this Quizlet set https://quizlet.com/class/2968854/. It's the only set I've come across that includes sound. Is the pronunciation close to the central Tibetan dialect or have other influences crept in?

Sounds like standard Exile Tibetan to me, based on the Lhasa dialect.

[Punya]

Sounds like standard Exile Tibetan to me, based on the Lhasa dialect.

Thanks! That's good to know.

In case anyone is interested, this Quizlet set forms part of the free Introduction to Classical Tibetan course based at the University of Toronto http://www.nettletibetan.ca/introductio ... al-tibetan.

[zerwe]

A little late to the conversation, but yes finding a native speaker in Central (Lhasa) dialect would be invaluable.
Additionally, there are presentations of how each row (and isolated each column) demonstrates guttural, palatal, dental, and labial sounds. The exceptions (outliers) are retroflex and pre-nasal. Understanding, theoretically the execution of these and finding examples that native speakers can provide are invaluable. Shortcut, there are many, many videos on YouTube and sound bites, etc... on the web in general.

Shaun