Learn Tibetan

I’ve tries to collect links to all the resources that have helped me start learning Tibetan at:

http://pfhblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/learning-tibetan.html

Hope that’s some help. I’ve found some of these resources have made learning the language more of a pleasure than a burden, which is what you want :)

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!

Yes, that’s my goal. Learn some Tibetan in 3 years.

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! :)

One doesn’t need to know the Wylie romanization system to enter Tibetan text. Tibetan letters/syllabary are assigned to the keyboard based on the sound of the letter. The letter M is reserved for stacking letters. See the explanation here:

See how to use the Microsoft Tibetan Keyboard in Windows Vista at
http://www.yalasoo.com/English/docs/yalasoo_en_MStbKb.html

See also the Tibetan character picker at
http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/tibetan/

and the Tibetan page from Penn State at
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/tibetan.html

I’ve been studying Tibetan full time for three months now with my teacher. Now are almost through Tournadre’s Manual of Tibetan and starting to do some outside reading to build up vocabulary. There are some easy Tibetan reading selections at http://www.learntibetan.net/index.htm although you may have to install fonts to see Tibetan on your screen.

Lately I found that my Vista OS computer handles Tibetan very well. Now I can even do Google searches in Tibetan although there is not much out there yet, although that will change fast. It really isn’t hard to type in Tibetan, that is as much as your Tibetan permits! See the note from the Tibetan-Himalayan Digital Library at http://tinyurl.com/2nvard and the note on the blog The Tibetan Portal at http://tibetanportal.com/myownblog/