More Tibetan pronunciation

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Punya
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More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

Somewhere along the way I have acquired an extract of an early version of Magee and Napper's book Fluent Tibetan. In this extract there is a table indicating the pronunciation of the Tibetan consonants.

I found it rather surprising, because there are a number of pairs of consonants that are transposed from what Is indicated in texts like Bialek's A Textbook in Classical Tibetan. For example Magee & Napper indicate that ཀ་ is pronounced 'ga' and ག་ is pronounced as 'ka'; ཅ is pronounced 'ja' and ཇ་ is pronounced 'ca'; ཏ་ is pronounced 'da' and ད་ is pronounced 'ta'. Bialek indicates the opposite.

It seems like Bialek's rendering of the Tibetan consonants in English is currently more accepted, given that a word like གཏེར་མ་ has come to be commonly referred to in English as 'terma', but can anyone explain how these differentiations have come about?

Does it have to do with the different Tibetan dialects or is it just that to the English ear the sound of these consonants is midway between these pairs and that these renderings (whether the Bialek version or the Magee & Napper one) are only an approximation of the spoken language? Which version is currently more commonly accepted in academic or translator circles or is there no agreement?
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Archie2009
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Archie2009 »

Bialek does not give an aid to modern ཆོས་སྐད་ pronunciation. I think in chapter 1 she indicates what phonetic values consonants had at the time of the invention of the script. A few pages before Table III.1 consonantal letters she writes on page 15 "As a consequence, learning Tibetan script is almost synonymous with learning the phonetics of the Tibetan language of the 630s."

As for ཀ་ being given as a voiced velar plosive rather than voiceless in the other book you mentioned, Wilson does the same thing in his Translating Buddhism from Tibetan (muddled in its grammatical analysis compared to Bialek imo), though I think he never mentions the words voiced/voiceless in the entire discussion. Perhaps this is a more common pronunciation? I think Wilson says so.
MiphamFan
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by MiphamFan »

ཀ is always IPA /k/, it likely has always been this sound since the beginning of the Tibetan alphabet since the corresponding Indic letter also has this sound in all the dozens of Indic-influenced scripts across the world.

It is also very clearly contrasted with /g/ in Tibetan transcriptions of Indic words like "guru".

If the textbook writers use "g", it is probably their own transcription system, probably because they assume English speakers don't understand aspiration well or (lower probability) it might be influenced by how Pinyin does it.

It seems that in standard exilic/Lhasa Tibetan, the operative distinction is largely aspiration, not voicing. At least this is what I have read, and how Chogyal Namkhai Norbu thought about it in his own transcription system.

In case you don't know, aspiration is the difference you hear between the k in "skill" Vs "kill. ཀ is always the same sound in "skill".

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. As you said, maybe it was an early version you saw.
Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

Archie2009 wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 9:25 am Bialek does not give an aid to modern ཆོས་སྐད་ pronunciation. I think in chapter 1 she indicates what phonetic values consonants had at the time of the invention of the script. A few pages before Table III.1 consonantal letters she writes on page 15 "As a consequence, learning Tibetan script is almost synonymous with learning the phonetics of the Tibetan language of the 630s."

As for ཀ་ being given as a voiced velar plosive rather than voiceless in the other book you mentioned, Wilson does the same thing in his Translating Buddhism from Tibetan (muddled in its grammatical analysis compared to Bialek imo), though I think he never mentions the words voiced/voiceless in the entire discussion. Perhaps this is a more common pronunciation? I think Wilson says so.
Thanks for pointing this out. I can see now that Bialek is not using modern pronunciation and that there are different views about whether classical Tibetan should be read using the original Tibetan phonetics or a modern pronunciation. (If anyone would like to see what she has to say on p.15 you can view it here https://www.amazon.com/Textbook-Classic ... 1032123575 using the Look Inside function).

Perhaps the rather idiosyncratic system used in Magee & Napper, Wilson and referenced in Hackett’s Learning Classical Tibetan may have originated at the University of Virginia as they all have/had (sadly I have just read that Bill Magee sadly passed away this year) strong connections to UVA.
Last edited by Punya on Sat May 06, 2023 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

MiphamFan wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 2:33 pm
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. As you said, maybe it was an early version you saw.
It does seem like it would be easier for me to stick to the IPA phonetics at this point. Unfortunately Bialek uses quite a lot of pronunciation examples from other European languages, such as Polish, with which I am not familiar. I don't know how accurate it is, but there is a guide to IPA phonetics for Tibetan with English approximations here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Tibetan.
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MiphamFan
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by MiphamFan »

Punya wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 11:41 pm
Archie2009 wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 9:25 am Bialek does not give an aid to modern ཆོས་སྐད་ pronunciation. I think in chapter 1 she indicates what phonetic values consonants had at the time of the invention of the script. A few pages before Table III.1 consonantal letters she writes on page 15 "As a consequence, learning Tibetan script is almost synonymous with learning the phonetics of the Tibetan language of the 630s."

As for ཀ་ being given as a voiced velar plosive rather than voiceless in the other book you mentioned, Wilson does the same thing in his Translating Buddhism from Tibetan (muddled in its grammatical analysis compared to Bialek imo), though I think he never mentions the words voiced/voiceless in the entire discussion. Perhaps this is a more common pronunciation? I think Wilson says so.
Thanks for pointing this out. I can see now that Bialek is not using modern pronunciation and that there are different views about whether classical Tibetan should be read using the original Tibetan phonetics or a modern pronunciation. (If anyone would like to see what she has to say on p.15 you can view it here https://www.amazon.com/Textbook-Classic ... 1032123575 using the Look Inside function).

Perhaps the rather idiosyncratic system used in Magee & Napper, Wilson and referenced in Hackett’s Learning Classical Tibetan may have originated at the University of Virginia as they all have/had (sadly I have just read that Bill Magee sadly passed away this year) strong connections to UVA.

Yeah, from the preview, it seems Bialek has a rather idiosyncratic approach to pronunciation too. It is not wrong per se, but you won't be understood immediately by most Tibetans if you literally pronounce all the letters. In effect it is kind of like pronouncing English exactly as it is spelt, pre-Great Vowel Shift etc.

However, that is a separate issue, the basic alphabet values never changed that much.

Unaspirated /k/ in ཀ has been unaspirated for centuries, ཁ has always been aspirated /kʰa/. If any transcription system uses the letter "g" for ཀ, it just means that they are using "g" to represent the unaspirated /k/ sound.

However, in Lhasa dialect, ག did change from a historical /g/ to a low tone aspirated /kʰa/. If a textbook uses "g" to represent /k/ I assume they will use "k" to represent the sound of both ག and ཁ. In many dialects, ག still remains a /g/ sound though.

The same applies to the ཅ and ཏ series, e.g. historical /dʒa/ "ja" became low tone aspirated /tʃʰa/ in Lhasa, historical /da/ became low tone /tʰa/.

Lhasa dialect generally changes the voiced consonants to aspirated low-tones, they lose aspiration in certain situations, and can be optionally pronounced as voiced, but voicing is secondary compared to the aspiration.

That Wikipedia guide to IPA for standard Tibetan is not that accurate, this short description on the Lhasa Tibetan page is more accurate but less user-friendly: Lhasa Tibetan, note what it says in the bold part:
In the low tone, the unaspirated /p, t, ts, ʈ ~ ʈʂ, tɕ, c, k/ are voiced [b, d, dz, ɖ ~ ɖʐ, dʑ, ɟ, ɡ], whereas the aspirated stops and affricates /pʰ, tʰ, tsʰ, ʈʰ ~ ʈʂʰ, tɕ, cʰ, kʰ/ lose some of their aspiration. Thus, in this context, the main distinction between /p, t, ts, ʈ ~ ʈʂ, tɕ, c, k/ and /pʰ, tʰ, tsʰ, ʈʰ ~ ʈʂʰ, tɕʰ, cʰ, kʰ/ is voicing. The dialect of the upper social strata in Lhasa does not use voiced stops and affricates in the low tone.
Most materials you find will be based on the unvoiced Lhasa dialect, it might be confusing for you to try to remember when something is voiced or not. Unless you meet regularly with native speakers of other dialects where the voiced consonants are still very active, I suggest forgetting about voicing and purely focusing on the aspirated vs unaspirated distinction, which is more important.
Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

MiphamFan wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 5:42 am

Yeah, from the preview, it seems Bialek has a rather idiosyncratic approach to pronunciation too.
Agreed. :smile:

Thanks to you and Archie for your comments and explanations. The discussions I've had about Tibetan language learning on DW over the last few months have been valuable.

Until now, I've just been endeavouring to learn some classical Tibetan via texts, online resources and recordings. I had the thought that at some future date I would learn some colloquial Tibetan.

My renewed interest in pronunciation is due to volunteering in a one-on-one program working with migrants who have lived in my country for 20+ years, but still have difficulty with English pronunciation.

This experience has prompted me to explore ways in which I could improve my Tibetan pronunciation, sooner rather than later. It has also demonstrated the value of an IRL tutor. It seems unlikely online tutoring sessions would have the same benefit, when it comes to pronunciation.

I already have a text and accompanying drills that are based on a central Tibetan dialect and there are other online resources, so I can work with these for the time being. There are only a small number of Tibetans living in my city and no Tibetan university courses but perhaps, in the future, I will be able to do an immersion course in Dharamsala or similar, so I can really hear and learn to speak the language.
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SilenceMonkey
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by SilenceMonkey »

Punya wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 8:37 am For example Magee & Napper indicate that ཀ་ is pronounced 'ga' and ག་ is pronounced as 'ka'; ཅ is pronounced 'ja' and ཇ་ is pronounced 'ca'; ཏ་ is pronounced 'da' and ད་ is pronounced 'ta'. Bialek indicates the opposite.

It seems like Bialek's rendering of the Tibetan consonants in English is currently more accepted, given that a word like གཏེར་མ་ has come to be commonly referred to in English as 'terma', but can anyone explain how these differentiations have come about?
Maggie and Napper are representing central Tibetan dialect. According to central Tibetan (which is the standard), གཏེར་མ་ is pronounced Derma. If Bialek is the opposite pronunciation of the characters, it’s probably Kham pronunciation.

If you want to learn pronunciation, the best way is with a Tibetan. And you don’t need to have an in-person lesson. Many teachers in Dharamsala (Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo, Esukhia) and Boudha (RYI) will teach virtually for $6-$7/hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It’s very easy to connect with them. And good pronunciation is important to acquire in the beginning of serious language study.

As for whether or not online tutoring sessions would have any benefit with regards to pronunciation, I think it works pretty well, and it’s much better than learning without a tutor at all.

If you’re serious about an immersion course in Dharamsala, I think they are most likely the quickest way to learn Tibetan. But FYI, the two year course at LRZTP just began a couple weeks ago. And last I heard, Esukhia closed down for Covid lockdown and hasn’t resumed in person. They only have a list of online tutors you can reach out to.

The Songtsen Library programs in Dehradun start in October of each year.
Archie2009
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Archie2009 »

The virtue of Bialek's Textbook in Classical Tibetan is that it in fact does not teach any particular modern pronunciation. The discussion of the phonetic values of the script at the time of the script's invention in the 7th century CE is limited to the introduction. Simply forcing the student to use dbu-can script from the start in the book's body allows you to use any pronunciation you prefer.
MiphamFan
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by MiphamFan »

SilenceMonkey wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 3:18 pm
Punya wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 8:37 am For example Magee & Napper indicate that ཀ་ is pronounced 'ga' and ག་ is pronounced as 'ka'; ཅ is pronounced 'ja' and ཇ་ is pronounced 'ca'; ཏ་ is pronounced 'da' and ད་ is pronounced 'ta'. Bialek indicates the opposite.

It seems like Bialek's rendering of the Tibetan consonants in English is currently more accepted, given that a word like གཏེར་མ་ has come to be commonly referred to in English as 'terma', but can anyone explain how these differentiations have come about?
Maggie and Napper are representing central Tibetan dialect. According to central Tibetan (which is the standard), གཏེར་མ་ is pronounced Derma. If Bialek is the opposite pronunciation of the characters, it’s probably Kham pronunciation.

If you want to learn pronunciation, the best way is with a Tibetan. And you don’t need to have an in-person lesson. Many teachers in Dharamsala (Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo, Esukhia) and Boudha (RYI) will teach virtually for $6-$7/hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It’s very easy to connect with them. And good pronunciation is important to acquire in the beginning of serious language study.

As for whether or not online tutoring sessions would have any benefit with regards to pronunciation, I think it works pretty well, and it’s much better than learning without a tutor at all.

If you’re serious about an immersion course in Dharamsala, I think they are most likely the quickest way to learn Tibetan. But FYI, the two year course at LRZTP just began a couple weeks ago. And last I heard, Esukhia closed down for Covid lockdown and hasn’t resumed in person. They only have a list of online tutors you can reach out to.

The Songtsen Library programs in Dehradun start in October of each year.
ཏེ is never pronounced with an English /d/ sound. It is an unaspirated /t/, Kham pronounces it more or less the same as Central Tibetan, maybe with slight differences in the tone contour.

If your transcription system uses the letter "d" for ཏ, it means that it is using "d" to indicate the IPA /t/ sound. Pinyin actually does this too, as does ChNN's transcription system.

I am repeating myself but I want to emphasise this more because most textbooks on this confused me when I was just starting. It is very much clearer to have the IPA comparison.
Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

SilenceMonkey wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 3:18 pm
And good pronunciation is important to acquire in the beginning of serious language study.

As for whether or not online tutoring sessions would have any benefit with regards to pronunciation, I think it works pretty well, and it’s much better than learning without a tutor at all.
I take your point. I will definitely consider this.
SilenceMonkey wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 3:18 pm
If you’re serious about an immersion course in Dharamsala, I think they are most likely the quickest way to learn Tibetan. But FYI, the two year course at LRZTP just began a couple weeks ago. And last I heard, Esukhia closed down for Covid lockdown and hasn’t resumed in person. They only have a list of online tutors you can reach out to.

The Songtsen Library programs in Dehradun start in October of each year.
An immersion course is just a vague thought at the moment, but thanks for the suggestions. It's a real shame about Esukhia. They don't seem to be running IRL group courses anymore. They are describing themselves as a 'network' of tutors.
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Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

Archie2009 wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 3:48 pm The virtue of Bialek's Textbook in Classical Tibetan is that it in fact does not teach any particular modern pronunciation. The discussion of the phonetic values of the script at the time of the script's invention in the 7th century CE is limited to the introduction. Simply forcing the student to use dbu-can script from the start in the book's body allows you to use any pronunciation you prefer.
Yeah, my mention of the Bialek book was a red herring in this conversation. From what I understand now, she is mainly offering her book as a text book and leaving it to the language program using her text to decide which dialect will be taught in that the program.
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Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

MiphamFan wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 4:03 am
ཏེ is never pronounced with an English /d/ sound. It is an unaspirated /t/, Kham pronounces it more or less the same as Central Tibetan, maybe with slight differences in the tone contour.

If your transcription system uses the letter "d" for ཏ, it means that it is using "d" to indicate the IPA /t/ sound. Pinyin actually does this too, as does ChNN's transcription system.

I am repeating myself but I want to emphasise this more because most textbooks on this confused me when I was just starting. It is very much clearer to have the IPA comparison.
I'm taking note of what you are saying, but I'm still confused.

If we continue with the first three consonants as an example, my current understanding of the central Tibetan dialect is that in phonics terms they are all velar (ie in the throat), aspirated as follows and have these high/low tones:

ཀ་ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ཁ་ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ག་
Voiceless/Unaspirated - - - - - - -Voiceless/Aspirated - - - - - - - -Voiced [sounds slightly aspirated]
kā - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - khā - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ga̱

If we use the video recommended by Nyamlae a few week ago (see below) as an example, the first three consonants to me (not saying I'm right), sound like:

guh - - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - kha - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - kah

I'd appreciate any comments.


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MiphamFan
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by MiphamFan »

Punya wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 10:15 am
MiphamFan wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 4:03 am
ཏེ is never pronounced with an English /d/ sound. It is an unaspirated /t/, Kham pronounces it more or less the same as Central Tibetan, maybe with slight differences in the tone contour.

If your transcription system uses the letter "d" for ཏ, it means that it is using "d" to indicate the IPA /t/ sound. Pinyin actually does this too, as does ChNN's transcription system.

I am repeating myself but I want to emphasise this more because most textbooks on this confused me when I was just starting. It is very much clearer to have the IPA comparison.
I'm taking note of what you are saying, but I'm still confused.

If we continue with the first three consonants as an example, my current understanding of the central Tibetan dialect is that in phonics terms they are all velar (ie in the throat), aspirated as follows and have these high/low tones:

ཀ་ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ཁ་ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ག་
Voiceless/Unaspirated - - - - - - -Voiceless/Aspirated - - - - - - - -Voiced [sounds slightly aspirated]
kā - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - khā - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ga̱

If we use the video recommended by Nyamlae a few week ago (see below) as an example, the first three consonants to me (not saying I'm right), sound like:

guh - - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - kha - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - kah

I'd appreciate any comments.


First of all, what is your prior language learning experience?

English speakers in general tend to aspirate all initial stops, so unless you learn some other languages well, you are not used to hearing unaspirated /k/ and associate it with /g/, which is usually unaspirated in English. To my ears, it is very clearly /k/, but I know Mandarin, Japanese, and can somewhat read Latin. Mandarin has the same contrast as Lhasa Tibetan in terms of unaspirated vs unaspirated.

I think you can repeat to yourself the following pairs:
"kill", "skill"
"tar", "star"

In "kill" and "tar" in Anglo English, the stops are aspirated, whereas if "k" and "t" follow "s", they are unaspirated. You can try to pronounce "skill", draw out the "ssss" then pronounce "kill", then drop the "s" completely. The "k" has a different quality from that in "kill". That difference is aspiration.


Indian English speakers, or speakers of e.g. Spanish, French, in English will usually not aspirate their initial "t"s and ""k"s etc unless they train it on purpose. Germanic language speakers usually WILL aspirate initial stops though.

I made this short recording to illustrate the difference:


"I can give you ten thousand."

The first version I pronounce without aspiration, it probably immediately sounds to you like an Indian or a speaker of Spanish speaking English, the second version I pronounce with aspiration. Makes sense?

You can also refer to recordings of Devanagari. The main difference is that they use the schwa with each letter rather than a pure /a/. They contrast unaspirated /k/ with unaspirated /g/. This one illustrates it well:


Tibetan preserves the same order as Devanagari, but they drop the aspirated voiced stops (gh, dh, jh etc)

This is also a good intro to IPA:

You can just watch the "plosives" section.


At this risk of confusing you, this is a video of a Khampa teacher teaching Kham Tibetan in Chinese:



She recites the alphabet starting from 5:32, you can hear that she pronounces ག་ with voicing, rather than aspiration.
Punya
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

MiphamFan wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 3:24 pm First of all, what is your prior language learning experience?

English speakers in general tend to aspirate all initial stops, so unless you learn some other languages well, you are not used to hearing unaspirated /k/ and associate it with /g/, which is usually unaspirated in English. To my ears, it is very clearly /k/, but I know Mandarin, Japanese, and can somewhat read Latin. Mandarin has the same contrast as Lhasa Tibetan in terms of unaspirated vs unaspirated.

I think you can repeat to yourself the following pairs:
"kill", "skill"
"tar", "star"

In "kill" and "tar" in Anglo English, the stops are aspirated, whereas if "k" and "t" follow "s", they are unaspirated. You can try to pronounce "skill", draw out the "ssss" then pronounce "kill", then drop the "s" completely. The "k" has a different quality from that in "kill". That difference is aspiration.

Indian English speakers, or speakers of e.g. Spanish, French, in English will usually not aspirate their initial "t"s and ""k"s etc unless they train it on purpose. Germanic language speakers usually WILL aspirate initial stops though.

I made this short recording to illustrate the difference: ..

"I can give you ten thousand."

The first version I pronounce without aspiration, it probably immediately sounds to you like an Indian or a speaker of Spanish speaking English, the second version I pronounce with aspiration. Makes sense?

You can also refer to recordings of Devanagari. The main difference is that they use the schwa with each letter rather than a pure /a/. They contrast unaspirated /k/ with unaspirated /g/. This one illustrates it well: ...

Tibetan preserves the same order as Devanagari, but they drop the aspirated voiced stops (gh, dh, jh etc)

This is also a good intro to IPA: ...

You can just watch the "plosives" section.

At this risk of confusing you, this is a video of a Khampa teacher teaching Kham Tibetan in Chinese: ...

She recites the alphabet starting from 5:32, you can hear that she pronounces ག་ with voicing, rather than aspiration.
Thank you for taking the time to provide these explanations.

Spanish is the only other language with which I'm somewhat familiar. My initial lessons in Spanish were a long time ago and there was definitely no discussion about phonetics. I haven't previously studied any Asian languages.

What you've said makes sense and I can understand the examples (except for the Sanskrit one). I already had some understanding of aspiration and I can hear the difference between the second column consonants ཁ་ ཆ་ ཐ་ ཕ་ ཚ་ and the first and third columns. What I didn't understand is that native English speakers tend to aspirate all initial stops, so this is really helpful.

The intro to IPA video is fascinating. I will be watching the whole thing and going over it slowly when I have more time.

My understanding is that the reason for doing the language drills over an extended period is that you learn to hear the sounds differently. I will be able to do the drills with the information you have provided in mind.

So now I have a more specific question about the difference between ཐ་ and ཚ་. Again, I expect doing the drills will help with this, but I'd also like to understand the theory.

On the website below you can hear different Tibetan speaker pronunciations and listen to two similar sounds side-by-side. When I listen to the geshe pronouncing ཐ་ and ཚ་ I can hear the difference - ཚ་ seems to have an 's' lurking somewhere in there - but I can't figure out what to do with my mouth, tongue and/or vocal cords so that I can pronounce it. :smile:

http://bum-pa-mi-rtag-pa.site

From what I have gathered, they are both alveolar (tip of the tongue against back of the teeth) and unaspirated. Are you able to explain the difference?
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SilenceMonkey
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by 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.
SilenceMonkey
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by SilenceMonkey »

I don’t think that “Khampa teaching kham tibetan” is teaching kham pronunciation. It really looks like the pronunciation style is modeled after central Tibetan. I suspect this is part of the government’s agenda to unify the Tibetan language, ie. make central Tibetan the standard used in schools, radio, tv, etc…

The ཞ། and ཟ། sound Khampa, and the ཅ། ཆ། ཟ། and ཤ། sound like how a Chinese person would pronounce it.

My own advice is ditch the IPA and all this linguistics nonsense. That’s for people who study linguistics. Speaking is more intuitive. It’s better to go by imitation of a Tibetan than mapping some abstract theory onto the process of making sounds.
nyamlae
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Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by nyamlae »

SilenceMonkey wrote: Thu May 11, 2023 4:11 am 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!
Punya wrote: Thu May 11, 2023 12:52 am When I listen to the geshe pronouncing ཐ་ and ཚ་ I can hear the difference - ཚ་ seems to have an 's' lurking somewhere in there - but I can't figure out what to do with my mouth, tongue and/or vocal cords so that I can pronounce it.
They are both alveolar and aspirated. The difference is that ཚ་ is an aspirated "ts" sound, whereas ཐ་ is an aspirated "t" sound.
ཨ་ཀུ་ཧ་ྈྐ།
ཨི་ཙུ་ཡ་ཤ།
རྀ་ཊུ་ར་ཥ།
ལྀ་ཏུ་ལ་ས།
ཨུ་པུ་ཝ་ྉྤ།

https://tibetanlanguage.school/
nyamlae
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2022 7:30 pm

Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by nyamlae »

Punya wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 10:15 am If we continue with the first three consonants as an example, my current understanding of the central Tibetan dialect is that in phonics terms they are all velar (ie in the throat), aspirated as follows and have these high/low tones:

ཀ་ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ཁ་ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ག་
Voiceless/Unaspirated - - - - - - -Voiceless/Aspirated - - - - - - - -Voiced [sounds slightly aspirated]
kā - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - khā - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ga̱
The third consonant is either voiced and unaspirated (like "g"), or it's unvoiced and aspirated (like "kh"). It depends on the speaker. The idea that it's pronounced voiced and aspirated (like "gh") is not corroborated by any solid evidence. Even if native speakers tell you that, don't listen to them -- native speakers of any language tend to have a poor understanding of how phonetics works. For example, I used to think that the English "sh" sound was really a combination of "s" and "h", but it's actually an independent sound that has no parts.

While we're on the topic, another common myth is that Standard Tibetan has 3 basic tones (low/mid/high), but this isn't corroborated by any solid evidence either. It has 2 basic tones only.
ཨ་ཀུ་ཧ་ྈྐ།
ཨི་ཙུ་ཡ་ཤ།
རྀ་ཊུ་ར་ཥ།
ལྀ་ཏུ་ལ་ས།
ཨུ་པུ་ཝ་ྉྤ།

https://tibetanlanguage.school/
Punya
Posts: 1437
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:50 pm

Re: More Tibetan pronunciation

Post by Punya »

SilenceMonkey wrote: Thu May 11, 2023 4:11 am 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.
Haha. I know what you mean. As I think I've said before, I learnt Spanish pronunciation by listening to my Spanish boyfriend and his housemates. Nevertheless, as someone who always wants to know 'why', I like the explanation as to why I'm hearing some Tibetan sounds differently. My primary interest in the IPA is because of the migrants I am tutoring. One (1st language Cambodian) is having trouble distinguishing 'b' and 'd' and she and a second student (1st language Italian) are both having trouble pronouncing 'f'. Having watched a bit more of the video, I think it's something I can dip into for ideas about how to help them.
We abide nowhere. We possess nothing.
~Chatral Rinpoche
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