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
- 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 ( ་ )
- A small dot placed after each syllable in Tibetan script, showing where one syllable ends and the next begins.
- Shad mark ( ། )
- A vertical stroke used like a period, marking the end of a phrase or sentence.
- High tone
- Central Tibetan is tonal; syllables whose original consonant was voiceless tend to carry a higher pitch.
- Low tone
- 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)
- A common final letter that often modifies the vowel before it and can be pronounced weakly or dropped in fast speech.
- Retroflex consonants
- Certain consonants, like ཊ and ཌ, are pronounced with the tongue curled back, mostly found in words borrowed from Sanskrit.
- Aspirated versus unaspirated
- Tibetan distinguishes consonants pronounced with a puff of air, like ཁ (kha), from those without, like ཀ (ka).
- Vowel umlaut marks
- 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
- In spoken Central Tibetan, many word-final consonants written in the script are pronounced very lightly or not at all.
- Stacked letters
- Tibetan script stacks certain consonants vertically within one syllable, though only some of the stacked letters are actually pronounced.
- Left-to-right script
- Unlike many neighboring scripts, Tibetan is written left to right, using its own alphabet derived from an ancient Indic script.
- Dialect variation
- 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)
- 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
- Learners often try to pronounce every letter in a word, including prefixes that are silent in standard speech.
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