Серия «Тибетский язык», курс 1: Тибетский алфавит, занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
Hi, this is a presentation of the Vowel Sounds of Tibetan. We have finished the 30 consonants, and now we're going on to the Vowel Sounds of Tibetan. So just to wrap up from the last video, here's the complete 30 consonants of the Tibetan language.

Alphabetical order is by row, okay? So if you have to look something up in a dictionary by hand, you would go this way, okay? Now we're going to move on to...

So let's just say the alphabet for good luck, let's say, please say, ka, ka, ka, nga, cha, cha, cha, nga, ta, ta, ta, nga, pa, pa, pa, ma, tsa, tsa, tsa, tsa, wa, wa, sha, sha, sa, sa, a, a, ya, ra, ra, medium tone, ra, ra, and trilled, not with your teeth on your lip, ra, ra, la, la, sha, sha, sa, sa, ha, ha, ha, ha, okay? Those are the 30 consonants. Why are we doing them in a vowel class?

I have to mention one thing. Every Tibetan consonant is assumed to have an inherent a sound, unless otherwise indicated by a vowel sign, a vowel symbol. So, anytime you see by itself, a consonant standing by itself, it's assumed to have an a inherent within it, which again is called the sok, or the life of the letter, okay?

So, it's very interesting, if you think about English, it's totally irrational how you say the alphabet. Why do you say A, B, C, D, E, F? Why don't you say, A, B, C, D, F, G, H?

You see, it's not consistent, English is just weird. But, every Tibetan letter has an inherent a. We just go ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, cha, cha, cha, cha, nya, like that, okay?

So now, what if you want to give it a different vowel sound? You'll have to start adding symbols, vowel symbols. So, there are five vowel sounds, but since the first is considered inherent in the letter, in the consonant, we never mark it, there's no separate symbol.

If you see a Tibetan symbol standing by itself, and there's no other vowel sign on it, it's assumed to be a, like ka, cha, ta, pa, tsa, okay? So, now we just have to go over the four vowel signs, which complete the five vowel sounds, because the a is inherent within every letter. There's a debate in Tibetan scriptures, is the last of the consonants really a vowel?

You know, like that. We're not going to get into that. We'll leave that to Muthu Dharmadhara and his disciple.

Which were... they were very heated arguments about it, okay? So, let's just take a normal...

let's take the first letter of the... You know, for a Tibetan, this looks like an A. You know, that's the mother letter of all their alphabets.

What is this? Ka, say ka. Ka.

Ka. Ka. Now let's start adding the four vowel symbols, which would change it from the natural a, or the inherent a, to some other vowel sign.

I'd like you also... you know, we'll have a separate drawing class, how to draw the characters, but in the meantime you might as well learn it. Traditionally you would use a bamboo pen.

The word for a pen in Tibetan is nyukul, which means piece of bamboo. And it was just a sharpened piece of bamboo. You could not make movements up, and you could not go back.

All movements had to be down, or to the left, or to the... you see? But you couldn't, like, go back with a bamboo pen covered with ink, you see?

So, when you make the vowel signs, there's a trick to it that will make it more attractive. You start the first one by making a small C, okay? And then in a separate stroke you go down, okay?

Like that. So you don't go like this, because you can't do that with a bamboo pen covered with ink. I should have come down a little bit further, okay?

This vowel... each of the four vowel symbols has its own name. And you need to know the names, because when you read out loud and...

when you spell out loud in Tibetan, you must know the vowel symbol names, okay? So they each have names. This one is called giku.

Say giku. Giku. Okay?

Kiku. I'm not aware that it has any separate meaning. I'm sure it had.

Like, maybe it meant hook or something, I don't know. But kiku means the E sound. When you say kiku, what's the first vowel sound?

E. So kiku is the name for the E vowel sound, okay? So, this by itself is ka.

You add a giku, it becomes ki. And don't get sloppy. When people add vowel sounds, they lose their correct pronunciation of the consonant.

So they'll say ki. You see what I mean? You gotta say ka.

When you read this out loud in a class, C, A, T, cat, in a Tibetan classroom, they'll say ka, kiku, ki, ki. It still has to be high tone, it still has to be unaspirated, it has to retain the quality of its column. So don't lose them when you add a vowel.

Don't get sloppy when you add a vowel. So say ka, kiku, ki, ki, ki. What are you doing?

Ki. Okay, high tone, unaspirated, ki, okay? A ki means a, for example, with a different letter, and then ki means dog.

So, you know, you gotta do this carefully. Say ka, giku, ki. Okay.

Alphabetically, after a, this is the first vowel. So when you're looking up words in a dictionary, you'd look up ka, kak, kang, and then you'd go to ki. Okay.

And if you're interested, which nobody is, but I don't care. When you're cataloging stuff in Tibetan, you don't number things, you don't say book number one in the kangyur. In this canon, you don't say book number one, book number two.

You say book ka, and then book ka, and then book ka. And when you run out of consonants, you start adding gikus. Book ki is the 31st book in a library.

And that's how they catalog things. They don't use numbers, they use alphabet. Which gets kind of weird after you cover all the 150 possibilities, then you gotta go into kao, and kyu, and...

Okay, so there's the first, alphabetically, there's the first vowel sound. Symbols, sorry. Okay.

The next one again, draw a C, and then come down from the upper left. And it'll look great. You don't do this Sanskrit thing of this, you see?

It's two strokes. Because the assumption is you're using a bamboo pen. Okay, and then it will look nice to a Tibetan.

They may not even know why. Okay, say ka. This second vowel symbol is called shab gyu.

Say shab gyu. Shab is the honorific for foot or leg, and gyu means a hook. So this is the leg hook.

So, say ka, shab gyu, ku. Don't lose the high tone on aspirated, don't say ku. Ku means body, the sound ku means body, sound ku means juice.

So you don't want to confuse them. This is ka, shab gyu, ku. Okay, good.

So that's the second vowel symbol, it's the third vowel sound, because there's a natural on in all consonants, with no separate symbol. Okay, now let's do the third one, the third symbols. And it's just a straight stroke from the upper left, okay?

Say ka. This vowel symbol is called deng bu, say deng bu. I'll teach you how to pronounce it correctly later, but right now you can just curl your tongue back, and say deng bu.

Deng bu. Deng means to... You know that Iwo Jima thing where they lift a flag?

Deng means to lift a flagpole, from a horizontal to a vertical position. So that's the idea, like it's halfway up. That's deng bu, means like a little bug or a little character.

Kids are called bu's, you know, deng bu. It's like a little slash or something. Deng bu, say deng bu.

Ka. Deng bu. Ke.

Ke. So we had a. I.

U. E. A.

Giku. Shabkyu. Deng bu.

Okay, don't say dra, that's English, right? Dra. Just curl your tongue back, and hit the top of your mouth with your curled tongue.

Deng bu. Deng bu. Okay, deng bu.

Good, okay, so... You notice that the sound of the vowel symbol is in its name somewhere. Giku.

Shabkyu. Deng bu. Okay, I, U, E.

Last one. Uh... Say naro.

Naro means horns of a bull. And that's convenient, because it looks like horns, okay? And the vowel sound, the quality of the vowel is O.

So in the name naro is an O. In the name deng bu is an A. In the name shabkyu is an U.

And in the name giku is an E. Okay, that makes it easier to remember. Unfortunately, they also have other sounds in them, but...

Say ka. Naro. Ko.

So don't get sloppy and say ko. Okay, that's a different meaning. Ko means necessary thing.

Ko means to understand. And ko means leather. So, you gotta pronounce them correctly.

You gotta keep those columns straight. This is ka. Say ka.

Naro. Ko. When you, when you jorlok, jorlok means spelling out loud.

C-A-T, cat. Jorloking in Tibetan is extremely important, because why? There are so many homonyms.

There are so many words that sound the same, that are spelled differently. So in Tibetan it's extremely important to learn jorlok. And we'll have a separate series on jorlok.

How to read out, how to spell out loud, okay? So let's do the five vowel sounds again. The inherent vowel.

Ka. Ki. Ku.

Ke. Ko. Ka.

Ka. Ka, ki, ku, ki. Ka, shab, kyu, ku.

Ka, deng, bu, ke. Ka, naro, ko. And that's the alphabetical order when using a dictionary.

So it always goes A, I, U, E, O, okay? A, I, U, E, O, wala, wala, bing, bing. Okay, that completes the five vowel sounds.

And the four vowel symbols of the Tibetan language. And next we'll go on to suffix letters. Okay.