Key Tibetan sounds, silent prefix letters, and tone patterns for accurate pronunciation. Front: the sound pattern or example word. Back: meaning plus a plain-English pronunciation note.
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- Silent prefix letters
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Many Tibetan syllables are written with extra consonants before the main letter that are no longer pronounced in modern Lhasa speech, such as the silent b in བཀྲ་ཤིས (Tashi).- Tsheg mark ( ་ )
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A small dot placed after each syllable in Tibetan script, showing where one syllable ends and the next begins.- Shad mark ( ། )
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A vertical stroke used like a period, marking the end of a phrase or sentence.- High tone
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Central Tibetan is tonal; syllables whose original consonant was voiceless tend to carry a higher pitch.- Low tone
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Syllables whose original consonant was voiced tend to carry a lower pitch, even though the consonant itself may now sound similar to its voiceless counterpart.- Suffix ས (sa)
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A common final letter that often modifies the vowel before it and can be pronounced weakly or dropped in fast speech.- Retroflex consonants
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Certain consonants, like ཊ and ཌ, are pronounced with the tongue curled back, mostly found in words borrowed from Sanskrit.- Aspirated versus unaspirated
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Tibetan distinguishes consonants pronounced with a puff of air, like ཁ (kha), from those without, like ཀ (ka).- Vowel umlaut marks
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Small marks above or below a letter change its vowel sound, for example the letter ཨུ carries a "u" sound while ཨི carries an "i" sound.- Word-final consonant weakening
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In spoken Central Tibetan, many word-final consonants written in the script are pronounced very lightly or not at all.- Stacked letters
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Tibetan script stacks certain consonants vertically within one syllable, though only some of the stacked letters are actually pronounced.- Left-to-right script
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Unlike many neighboring scripts, Tibetan is written left to right, using its own alphabet derived from an ancient Indic script.- Dialect variation
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Pronunciation differs notably between Central Tibetan (Lhasa dialect), Kham, and Amdo regions, especially in tone and consonant clusters.- Minimal pair: ཆུ versus ཆུང (chu vs chung)
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Chu (water or the number ten) and chung (small) are distinguished by the added final consonant, showing how word endings change meaning.- Common learner error: pronouncing silent prefixes
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Learners often try to pronounce every letter in a word, including prefixes that are silent in standard speech.
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