Learn Tibetan

Free online syllabii for self-study corses in Tibetan (colloquial Lhasa dialect and classical Tibetan) with textbook, audio cassette and dictionary recommendations:

http://www.thdl.org/xml/show.php?xml=/education/tllr/xml/tllr.xml

I saw a language program that’s got a very nice “intro to Tibetan”. Bought it and started using it today. It’s very effective, fun to use and has other languages on there too (bonus!). Although it is only the basics, I’m learning time, food, shopping, phrases, colors, basic first words, parts of the body, numbers and countries. It’s got interactive speech guides, male and female pronounciation, a record-your-voice-and-compare function, and quizzes and tests that are fun and easy to work with. (If you’re interested the software is by Instant Immersion and is called 33 Languages Deluxe v2.0, and runs about $40) I’ll look for something more in-depth when I master what’s on here, and by then I should have the basics covered and have better pronounciation. Anyway, Yay! I’m finally able to hear Tibetan spoken! Woo!

Looks like the guy who was going to copy those tapes to CD for me, so I can listen to the lessons in the car, has decided not to. This is frustrating.

I got an email out to an old friend who has the technology to directly copy from tape to CD in a nice professional way, and got one back saying he’d be happy to. However, I haven’t gotten a response yet as to when and where would be best for me to meet him and hand over the tapes and CDs. Grrr.
Sent a follow-up today since it’s been over a week since the first one. Would really like to know if this is something I should be counting on or not. grumble grumble...Ohmm…..

Learning Tibetan is a pain in the butt without audio to go along with it, as even the phoenetic spellings are complex. Soo, to help me along with learning how to speak it correctly, I’ve finally taken the plunge and asked an old aquaintance if he’d be willing to transfer the tapes that came with the book onto CDs that I could actually listen to (as we have no tape player either at home or in the car anymore). Hopefully he’ll be willing to help, and then I can get more into this.

In every other language I’ve learned, I’ve found having fun learning weird or rather not-very-useful-but-funny phrases keeps my attention longer and actually helps with learning the grammar (and some of the vocabulary, of course). So I’m taking the same approach with Tibetan. Can anyone offer up a suggestion for funny sentence or phrase I should learn to say in Tibetan?

Thanks for your contributions! :)

I got the Tibetan language book and the tapes, now I just have to make time to sit down and study it.