Серия «Тибетский язык», курс 1: Тибетский алфавит, занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
Welcome back to Tibetan alphabet class. During the last three classes we've covered half the 30 consonants in the Tibetan alphabet, half of the Tibetan alphabet we've done, by learning the gaccha tabaza tricks. So please say gaccha tabaza, gaccha tabaza, gaccha tabaza, gaccha tabaza, gaccha tabaza, gaccha tabaza, So we finished half of the 30 consonants by finishing three columns which all have the same sound, gaccha tabaza, because it moves up the throat, guttural, palatal, dental, labial, and then some kind of teeth thing going on with sa.

So we finished that pattern and it holds. We have gutturals, palatals, dentals, labials, and teethy things, and then we have high tone, unaspirated, high tone, aspirated, then low tone, aspirated. The first column exists in English or not?

Does not, okay? Give me a cup of tea and I'll give you a pen. We don't have, okay?

Second column exists in English or not? Yes. Mostly English consonants correspond to the second column in Tibetan.

Third column do we have in English outside of Brazilian English? No, okay? Now we're going to do the fourth column which hangs together also, pretty much, and it's a very beautiful way that it hangs together.

So we're over to the fourth column now, and this is the nasal. Nasal means any kind of sound that is an N sound, or an M sound, or an U sound. These are all called nasals, because they kind of sound like you have a stuffed up nose, okay?

So they're called nasals. The first—and they correspond to the area of the mouth or throat where contact is made between the tongue and the throat or the mouth. So the first one is going to be a guttural, closure of the throat.

So here is—please say, please say ring, okay? Like Lord of the Rings. Ring.

Then say ring a bell. Say it fast. Ring a bell.

Ring a bell. Take the R off. Ing a bell.

Ing a bell. Ing a bell. Take the I off.

Ng a bell. Ng a bell. Ng a bell.

So a lot of people have trouble with this one because it doesn't exist in English as an initial consonant. It's very popular in Vietnamese as an initial consonant, but we don't have it in English. So you have to trick your mouth into saying it.

It's like red light, red light, red light, green light. You know what I mean? You have to trick your mouth.

So say ring a bell. Ring a bell. Ing a bell.

Ing a bell. Ng a bell. Ng a bell.

Ng a bell. Ng a. Ng a.

Great. Most people try to get a tongue in there on the top of the mouth and they get confused. Nuh.

Nuh. Nuh. You can do this, if you do this sound properly, you should be able to do it with your hand holding your tongue down.

Nguh. Nguh. It's a closure of the throat here.

Okay? Nguh. Nguh.

Bell. Nguh. Okay?

Nguh. Got it? Very few foreigners can do this sound correctly at the beginning.

You guys are doing really well. I remember I struggled with it for quite a while. Nguh.

Nguh. The tongue is not making contact with the mouth. Nguh.

It's a closure of the throat here. Nguh. Okay?

Nguh. So that's a guttural that comes from the throat. So if we go across, which happens to be alphabetical order, which we'll talk about in a later video, it's say ka, ka, ka, ka, nguh.

Ka, ka, ka, ka, nguh. And I will say at the beginning that the nasal column is low tone, and if you make it high tone you change the meaning. Okay?

Nguh means a... Nguh means five. It can mean before, or it can mean a drum.

Nguh means me. Okay? This is nguh, saying nguh.

So you cannot say nguh. Then you change the meaning. If you're careful about the vowel quality you can catch yourself.

R is the vowel quality of the lower tone. Nguh. U is the vowel quality of the higher tone.

Nguh. Okay? Nguh means five, before, or drum.

Nguh means me. So, but a lot of foreigners will say nguh, and then meaning me, and they don't know what you're talking about. Okay?

So please say ka, ka, ka, ka, nguh, nguh, nguh. Okay, be careful to say it low tone. I want you to contrast low tone and high tone.

Nguh. Nguh. Nguh.

Nguh. Nguh. Okay?

Very important. Chinese has four tones, I mean, at least in Mandarin, so it'd be like wu, wu, wu, wu. Okay?

And if you don't get it right, they'd have no idea what you're talking about. So, nguh. Okay, now the palatal row, which is being made by contact with the tongue with the top of the mouth.

Cha, cha, cha, and then the palatal nasal is nguh. Low tone, nguh. Nguh.

Cha, cha, cha, and then from the same contact area, nguh. Like senor, or, you know, we have Kenyan, Kenyan or senor, like that. We have the end with a tilde over it.

Okay? So, nguh. If it's low tone it means fish.

If it's high tone, I can't think of any... It can mean ears to do with your ears, or listening, nian, or like that. Okay?

Okay, now we're gonna need a dental nasal. Say ta. Ta.

Ta. Then what? Give me the nasal from the...

What's the nasal from behind your teeth? Na. Na.

See the contacts being made right behind your teeth? So it's not technically a dental, but we call it a dental. Say ta.

Ta. Ta. Ta.

Na. Okay? Ta.

Ta. Ta. Ta.

Na. Let's go down the nasal column so far. Nguh.

Nguh. Nguh. Nguh.

What's the labial? What's the nasal sound that comes from your lips? Ma.

Ma. Okay? Say pa.

Pa. Pa. Ma.

Okay? Ma means mother, or not. Ma means a wound, or to speak.

So it... obviously you have to be careful about tones on your nasals. Okay?

So saying pa. Pa. Pa.

Ma. Okay? Let's go down the nasal column.

Nguh. Nguh. Nguh.

Ma. Okay? That's all the nasals.

Unfortunately the fifth one is not a nasal. Okay? But we have to fill it in just for completeness.

Wa. Wa. Okay?

Nguh. Nguh. Nga.

Nga. Ma. Wa.

Okay? And it's just a low tone wa. Wa is the rarest letter in Tibetan.

It only appears in like two or three words. It means fox. You almost never see it, but because there's such a now an interchange between Tibetan and Chinese, and Chinese has so many was, that you'll see a lot like huashang, or you'll see lots of words with piwang, is a guitar, for example.

So you you'll hear that kind of...you'll hear a few was, but it's rare and people don't even know how to draw it. Most people don't know how to draw it. So it's wa.

Okay? So now we have...we finished 20 of the 30 Tibetan consonants. We've seen a pattern of guttural, palatal, dental, labial, and then teethy thing here.

And we've seen the pattern of high tone unaspirated, high tone aspirated, low tone aspirated, low tone nasal. Low tone nasal except for this last letter. Okay?

Those of you who are interested in studying Sanskrit later, there are floating nasals in Sanskrit. They're usually a dot above the letter, like OM has a dot, right? And those are...those are lab...those are nasals which are dependent upon the next letter to come. So, sangga would...the letter is a dot in the Sanskrit alphabet, but you're supposed to say nga if the next letter is ga. So sangga. Okay?

Then if the next letter is like cha, like five, is pancha, like...then you'd have to say nga. The sound...the nasal before...the floating nasal before a cha would be the palatal one, which is pancha. Pancha.

Okay? Then this would be a dental. You would say pandita, or something like that.

Panta, or santana. Santana, a mental stream, you see? So...and very, very few people understand that. Very, very few. And they just write the wrong thing, like samsara. The floating nasal for S is N.

Samsara. It's always samsara. Chakrasamvara, not samvara.

There's no such thing in Sanskrit. So, people just don't understand the...but if you understand the nasal column, your Sanskrit gets better, because you know what the correct nasal would be before the next letter. If it's sambhara, if it's a B sound, it has to be M.

If it's a D sound, it has to be N. If it's a palatal sound, it has to be nga. If it's a guttural, it has to be nga.

Okay? People, they just don't get it, ever. Some people never get it.

So, when you're learning Sanskrit, you can pull your nasals from the nasal column for the corresponding row that you're in. Okay? Alright, we've finished 20 of the Tibetan letters of the consonants, and we have 10 more to go in the last two and a half rows.

So, we'll be doing that in the next exciting installment of Tibetan