Tibetan languages are spoken by some 6 million people, not all of whom are Tibetans.[1] With the worldwide spread of Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan language has spread into the western world and can be found in many Buddhist publications and prayer materials; with some western students learning the language for translation of Tibetan texts. Outside Lhasa itself, Lhasa Tibetan is spoken by approximately 200,000 exile speakers who have moved from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries. Tibetan is also spoken by groups of ethnic minorities in Tibet who have lived in close proximity to Tibetans for centuries, but nevertheless retain their own languages and cultures.
Although the term "Tibetic" had been applied in various ways within the Sino-Tibetan research tradition, Nicolas Tournadre defined it as a phylum derived from Old Tibetan.[2] Following Nishi (1987)[4] and Beyer (1992),[5] he identified several lexical innovations that can be used as a diagnosis to distinguish Tibetic from the other languages of the family, such as བདུནbdun "seven".[2][6]
The "Tibetic languages" in this sense are a substitute for the term "Tibetan languages/dialects" used in the previous literature; the distinction between "language" and "dialect" is not straightforward, and labeling varieties of Tibetic as "Tibetan dialects" could be misleading not only because those "dialects" are often mutually-unintelligible, but also the speakers of Tibetic do not necessarily consider themselves as ethnic Tibetan, as is the case with Sherpas, Ladakhis, Baltis, Lahaulas, Sikkimese and Bhutanese.[2][7]
Origins
Marius Zemp (2018)[8] hypothesizes that Tibetan originated as a pidgin with the West Himalayish language Zhangzhung as its superstratum, and Rgyalrongic as its substratum (both languages are part of the broader Sino-Tibetan family). However, there are many grammatical differences between the Rgyalrongic and Tibetic languages; Rgyalrongic tend to use prefixes such as *kə-, *tə-, etc., while Tibetic languages use suffixes such as -pa/-ba, -ma, -po/-bo, -mo, etc.[9]
Similarly, Tamangic also has a West Himalayish superstratum, but its substratum is derived from a different Sino-Tibetan branch.
Tournadre & Suzuki (2023) recognize 8 geographical sections, each with about 7-14 groups of Tibetic dialects.[3] This classification is a revision of Tournadre (2014).[2]
Tournadre (2014)[2] classifies the Tibetic languages as eight geolinguistic continua, consisting of 50 languages and over 200 dialects. This is an updated version of his work in 2008.[11] The Eastern and Southeastern branches have lower internal mutual intelligibility, but it is more limited in the Northwestern branch and between certain southern and northern Khams dialects. These continua are spread across five countries with one exception, this being Sangdam, a Khams dialect in Kachin, Myanmar.
Some classifications group Khams and Amdo together as Eastern Tibetan (not to be confused with East Bodish, whose speakers are not ethnically Tibetan). Some, like Tournadre, break up Central Tibetan. Phrases such as 'Central Tibetan' and 'Central Bodish' may or may not be synonymous: Southern (Central) Tibetan can be found as Southern Bodish, for example; 'Central Tibetan' may mean dBus or all tonal lects apart from Khams; 'Western Bodish' may be used for the non-tonal western lects while 'Western Tibetan' is used for the tonal lects, or 'Bodish' may even be used for other branches of the Tibeto-Kanauri languages.[16]
Lexical similarity
Amdo Tibetan has 70% lexical similarity with Central Tibetan and Khams Tibetan, while Khams Tibetan has 80% lexical similarity with Central Tibetan.[17]
The national language of Bhutan is Dzongkha, a Tibetic language originally spoken in the western region.[23] Although non-Tibetic languages (Tshangla, East Bodish) are dominant in many parts of the country, Dzongkha is also widely used there as a second-language.[23] Other Tibetic varieties of Bhutan include Choča-ngača, Brokpa and Lakha.[24]
He estimates there are about 300 Khams Tibetan speakers inhabiting at least four villages in Dazundam Village Tract, Pannandin Sub-township, Nogmong Township, Putao District, Kachin State.[28] The four villages he mentions are Tahaundam, "Shidudan" (Japanese: シドゥダン), Sandam, Madin, the second of which he provides no romanization because the placename is uncharted on the map available to him.[28] According to Suzuki's consultant, they migrated from Zayu County, Tibet more than a century ago although they still have contact with relatives living there, and there are few differences between the dialects of the four villages .[29]
Since Rawang people are the ethnic majority of the area, the Tibetans also have a command of Rawang, which is mainly used for interethnic communication; those with primary education can speak and write Burmese as well, while they are illiterate in their own language.[29]
Most Tibetic languages are written in one of two Indic scripts. Standard Tibetan and most other Tibetic languages are written in the Tibetan script with a historically conservative orthography (see below) that helps unify the Tibetan-language area. Some other Tibetan languages (in India and Nepal) are written in the related Devanagari script, which is also used to write Hindi, Nepali and many other languages. However, some Ladakhi and Balti speakers write with the Urdu script; this occurs almost exclusively in Pakistan. The Tibetan script fell out of use in Pakistani Baltistan hundreds of years ago upon the region's adoption of Islam. However, increased concern among Balti people for the preservation of their language and traditions, especially in the face of strong Punjabi cultural influence throughout Pakistan, has fostered renewed interest in reviving the Tibetan script and using it alongside the Perso-Arabic script. Many shops in Baltistan's capital Skardu in Pakistan's "Northern Areas" region have begun supplementing signs written in the Perso-Arabic script with signs written in the Tibetan script. Baltis see this initiative not as separatist but rather as part of an attempt to preserve the cultural aspects of their region which has shared a close history with neighbours like Kashmiris and Punjabis since the arrival of Islam in the region many centuries ago.
Historical phonology
Old Tibetan phonology is rather accurately rendered by the script. The finals were pronounced devoiced although they are written as voiced, the prefix letters assimilated their voicing to the root letters. The graphic combinations hr and lh represent voiceless and not necessarily aspirate correspondences to r and l respectively. The letter ' was pronounced as a voiced guttural fricative before vowels but as homorganic prenasalization before consonants. Whether the gigu verso had phonetic meaning or not remains controversial.
For instance, Srongbtsan Sgampo would have been pronounced [sroŋpʦanzɡampo] (now pronounced [sɔ́ŋʦɛ̃ɡʌ̀mpo] in Lhasa Tibetan) and 'babs would have been pronounced [mbaps] (pronounced [bapˤ][dubious – discuss] in Lhasa Tibetan).
Already in the 9th century the process of cluster simplification, devoicing and tonogenesis had begun in the central dialects, as can be shown by Tibetan words transliterated into other languages, particularly Middle Chinese but also Uyghur.
The combination of the abovementioned evidence enables us to form the following outline of the evolution of Tibetan. In the 9th century, as shown by the bilingual Tibetan–Chinese treaty of 821–822 found in front of Lhasa's Jokhang, the complex initial clusters had already been reduced, and the process of tonogenesis was likely well underway.
The next change took place in Tsang (Gtsang) dialects: The ra-tags were altered into retroflex consonants, and the ya-tags became palatals.
Later on the superscribed letters and finals d and s disappeared, except in the east and west. It was at this stage that the language spread in Lahul and Spiti, where the superscribed letters were silent, the d and g finals were hardly heard, and as, os, us were pronounced ai, oi, ui. The words introduced from Tibet into the border languages at that time differ greatly from those borrowed at an earlier period.
Other changes are more recent and restricted to Ü and Tsang. In Ü, the vowel sounds a, o, u have now mostly umlauted to ä, ö, ü when followed by the coronal sounds i, d, s, l and n. The same holds for Tsang with the exception of l, which merely lengthens the vowel. The medials have become aspirate tenues with a low intonation, which also marks words having a simple initial consonant; while the former aspirates and the complex initials simplified in speech are uttered with a high tone, shrill and rapidly.
Reconstruction
Proto-Tibetic
Proto-Tibetic, the hypothetical proto-language ancestral to the Tibetic languages, has been reconstructed by Tournadre (2014).[2] Proto-Tibetic is similar to, but not identical to, written Classical Literary Tibetan. The following phonological features are characteristic of Proto-Tibetic (Tournadre 2014: 113).
The prefixes *s(ǝ)-, *d(ǝ)-/g(ǝ)-, *m(ǝ)-, and *b(ǝ)-, which have been retained from Proto-Tibeto-Burman. *s(ǝ)- is primarily used with animals and body parts, as well as *d(ǝ)-/*g(ǝ)- and *m(ǝ)-/*r(ǝ)-.
Consonant change from lateral to dental position after /m/ (e.g., *ml > *md).
Distinctive aspirated initial stops. This phenomenon is attested by alternating aspirated and non-aspirated consonants in Old Tibetan orthography. Examples include gcig ~ gchig (གཅིག་ ~ གཆིག་) 'one'; phyin-chad ~ phyin-cad (ཕྱིན་ཆད་ ~ ཕྱིན་ཅད་) 'from now on'; ci ~ chi (ཅི་ ~ ཆི་) 'what'; and cu ~ chu (ཅུ་ ~ ཆུ་) 'water'.
Reconstructed Proto-Tibetic forms from Tournadre (2014) include:
*g(ǝ)-tɕik 'one'
*g(ǝ)-nyis 'two'
*g(ǝ)-su- 'three'
*b(ǝ)-ʑi 'four'
*l(ǝ)-ŋa 'five'
*d(ǝ)-ruk 'six'
*b(ǝ)-dun 'seven'
*b(ǝ)-rgyat 'eight'
*d(ǝ)-gu 'nine'
*b(ǝ)-tɕu 'ten'
*s(ǝ)-dik-pa 'scorpion'
*s(ǝ)-bal 'frog'
*s(ǝ)-tak 'tiger'
*s(ǝ)-b-rul 'snake'
*s(ǝ)-pra 'monkey'
*s(ǝ)-kra 'hair'
*s(ǝ)-nyiŋ 'heart'
*s(ǝ)-na 'nose'
*d(ǝ)-myik 'eye'
*m(ǝ)-go 'head'
*r(ǝ)-na 'ear'
Pre-Tibetic
Pre-Tibetic is a hypothetical pre-formation stage of Proto-Tibetic.[2]
*ty-, *ly-, *sy- were not palatalized in Pre-Tibetic, but underwent palatalization in Proto-Tibetic (Tournadre 2014: 113-114).[2] Posited sound changes from Pre-Tibetic to Proto-Tibetic include *ty- > *tɕ-, *sy- > *ɕ-, *tsy- > *tɕ-, and *ly- > *ʑ-. However, Tournadre (2014: 114) notes that many Bodish languages such as Basum, Tamang, and Kurtöp (East Bodish) have not undergone these changes (e.g., Bake (Basum) ti 'what' vs. Proto-Tibetic *tɕ(h)i and Bake tɨ 'one' vs. Proto-Tibetic *g(ǝ)-tɕ(h)ik; Kurtöp Hla: 'iron' and Bumthaplak 'iron' vs. Proto-Tibetic *ltɕaks).
Some Pre-Tibetic reconstructions, along with reconstructed Proto-Tibetic forms and orthographic Classical Literary Tibetan, from Tournadre (2014: 114-116) are listed below.
Nishi, Yoshiro (1987). "Gendei Tibet-go hoogen no bunrui" 現代チベット語方言の分類 [A Classification of Tibetan Dialects]. Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology. 11 (4): 837–900. hdl:10502/2932.
Sagart, Laurent; Jacques, Guillaume; Lai, Yunfan; Ryder, Robin; Thouzeau, Valentin; Greenhill, Simon J.; List, Johann-Mattis (2019), "Dated language phylogenies shed light on the history of Sino-Tibetan", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116 (21): 10317–10322, doi:10.1073/pnas.1817972116, PMC6534992, PMID31061123.
^ abTournadre, Nicolas (2014). "The Tibetic languages and their classification". In Owen-Smith, Thomas; Hill, Nathan W. (eds.). Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area. De Gruyter. pp. 103–129. ISBN978-3-11-031074-0. (preprint)
^ abcdefghijklmTournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
^Zemp, Marius. 2018. On the origins of Tibetan. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.
^Katia Chirkova, 2008, "On the position of Báimǎ within Tibetan", in Lubotsky et al. (eds), Evidence and Counter-Evidence, vol. 2.
^Tournadre, Nicolas (2008). "Arguments against the Concept of 'Conjunct'/'Disjunct' in Tibetan"(PDF). In B. Huber; M. Volkart; P. Widmer; P. Schwieger (eds.). Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek: Festschrift für Roland Bielmeier zu Seinem 65. Geburtstag, Vol. 1. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. pp. 282–283. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2011-07-20.
^N. Tournadre (2005) "L'aire linguistique tibétaine et ses divers dialectes." Lalies, 2005, n°25, p. 7–56 [1]
^Shao, Mingyuan 邵明园 (2018). Hexi Zoulang binwei Zangyu Dongnahua yanjiu 河西走廊濒危藏语东纳话研究 [Study on the mDungnag dialect, an endangered Tibetan language in Hexi Corridor]. Guangzhou: Zhongshan University Publishing House 中山大学出版社.
Denwood, Philip (2007). "The Language History of Tibetan". In Bielmeier, Roland; Haller, Felix (eds.). Linguistics of the Himalayas and beyond. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 47–70. ISBN978-3-11-019828-7.
van Driem, George (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language. Brill. ISBN9004103902.