Tibetan Language for Non-Tibetans A Beginner's Guide to Writing and Speaking Tibetan

This book serves as a practical guidebook for non-Tibetan beginners who want to learn the Tibetan writing system and conversational Tibetan, but have never studied the language before. Based on modern colloquial Tibetan, it is founded on traditional Tibetan expression as well as the proper shape and style used by Tibetans in their daily lives, enabling learners to connect directly with Tibetans. This book is an outcome of the author’s in-depth research on Tibetan language for the last two and half decades and is the third book in the series of his research work devoted to the ‘Linguistic Studies of the lesser-known/endangered Languages of Indian Himalayas & beyond’. This book features a Foreword from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Introduction.- An overview of thonmi sambhotas contribution in the development of tibetan writing system and grammar.- Origin and invention of tibetan script.- The prefixes suffixes and post suffixes in tibetan writing system.- The superscribed letters and the subscribed letters in tibetan writing system.- Tibetan numeral system.- Basic terminologies in Tibetan.- Conversational tibetan.- The eight cases in classical tibetan.- The tibetan sound system.

Dr. Konchok Tashi has been teaching Tibetan language in the Department of Far East Languages, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, India, since August 2012. He was invited to Uppsala University, Sweden, for continuing the joint research work on the documentation of Lesser-Known languages of the Himalayas. Dr. Tashi had taken part in several international collaborative projects and has published articles and research papers in national and international journals, including Scopus indexed journals, as well as contributed book chapters in edited volumes. He published an edited book, entitled, “Languages of Indian Himalayas”, in 2021 for which he has been awarded the ‘India Prime Awards-2021’ by FoXclues, and was recognized among the top 100 authors in India. Dr. Tashi also authored a book, entitled, “Understanding Language Attitude and Linguistic Ecology in Indian Himalayas: A perspective from an Endangered Language 'Ladakhi'”, which was published in 2023.