Серия «Тибетский язык», курс 1: Тибетский алфавит, занятие 10

[Speaker 1]
We've been working on sub-join letters. We covered two of the three main ones, which were ya, sub-join, ya-tak, and we finished ra, ra-tak, and now we're going to do la-taks, moving in alphabetical order. So please say la-tak.

La-tak. So la means letter, and then tak means joined on the bottom of another letter, okay? And again, this sub-join letter is not found on all Tibetan letters, but only on some Tibetan letters.

We'll take a sub-join la letter. So I'll give you some of the main ones, okay? Or, I guess that's all of them actually.

We can start out with this letter, which is called ka. Now a normal-sized la is about this big, right? And you just shrink it in half.

You shrink the size in half, and you sub-join it to the other letter. So this will look like this, okay? Please say ka, la-tak.

Now, all la sub-joins, with one exception, just become a high-tone la, okay? So say ka, la-tak, la. Ka, la-tak, la.

So this is la, la, la, la, la, high-tone. I can give an example of a word—the shabgyu would go under here— and you would have the word lu. Say lu.

Lu means naga, or dragon, or serpent. So ludup is Nagarjuna, Nagarjuna, okay? So Arya Nagarjuna.

So say ka, la-tak, la, shabgyu, lu. Meaning a naga, a snake, or a serpent, or a dragon, okay? And you would put the dot here, okay?

Now we'll give another sub-join example, sub-join la. And I'm going to draw it a little better this time. The la would be a little closer.

Say ka, la-tak, la. Again, all la sub-joins except for one are just high-tone la. Ka, la-tak, la.

Then if you add a shabgyu, that becomes lu. Ka, la-tak, la. Shabgyu, lu.

Ka, la-tak, la. Shabgyu, lu. This—so they're pronounced the same, okay?

Without the shabgyu, they would both be la, la. And with the shabgyu, they're both lu. Now this one happens to mean song, okay?

This one means song, and this one means naga, or snake, or dragon, okay? So you can have the same sound with a different meaning. And then to make it clear which one you're talking about, you change the spelling, okay?

So this is song, lu. Like Dorje Lu is diamond song. Very common in Tantra.

There are many Dorje Lu's, okay? Now we'll go to another— the second row in Tibetan, cha-cha-cha-nya, does not take a latak. The third row, ta-ta-ta-na, does not take a latak.

The fourth row has one, okay? Which is pa. So, and then you would just join the latak like this, okay?

And this is a full-size pa, okay? Just for comparison, all right? Please say pa.

Pa. Pa. Good.

Latak?

[Speaker 2]
La.

[Speaker 1]
Pa. Latak? La.

This la, for example, low-tone la, by itself, means a mountain pass. Or it means to, in, at, on, all these prepositions, except in Tibetan it's a postposition, but that's another problem. This is la.

Say low-tone la. La. La.

La. La. And this happens to be the spelling for a lama.

Lama. Meaning a teacher, okay? So the high tone, this is the spelling for lama.

Say lama. Lama. Okay?

So if you say la, it's different from la. And if you don't pronounce it right, people don't know what you're talking about. If you say lama, it means my mother got lost on the mountain path.

Okay, really? And then lama means a teacher, okay? Lama.

Got it? Okay. Let's go down to some more rows.

Sa row doesn't take any lataks. And then sha, sa, a, ya, ra, la. The, the, almost one of the last rows.

Ra. Latak. La.

Okay? Say ra. Latak.

La. Ra. Latak.

La. Okay? This one means the thigh, the thigh, okay?

So la. La. La.

La. Okay, same. They're all just a high tone la.

Let's go to sa. Sa. Latak, la.

Again, a normal size sa looks about this big. A normal size la looks about this big. Okay?

Say sa. Sa. Latak.

Latak. La.

[Speaker 2]
La.

[Speaker 1]
Sa.

[Speaker 2]
Sa.

[Speaker 1]
Latak.

[Speaker 2]
Latak. La. La.

[Speaker 1]
This la means easy, okay? This la means easy. Uh, le, le, lavado means it's easy.

Uh, if you put a shakyu, say lu. It means to deceive someone, okay? To trick someone.

It's lu, luwa, okay? With a slightly different prefix on it, okay? Say lu.

Lu. Lu. Okay?

Which can mean dragon, song, or you tricked me. Okay? So, uh, they're all pronounced the same.

Then you have to see the spelling. And you have to learn the spelling, okay? Got it?

Uh, one exception, and then we'll take a break for our Mexican food. Uh, I told you there was one exception. Oh, by the way, the, we previously had head letters.

And ra was a head letter, and sa was a head letter. So a question comes up. How do you know this isn't an L with a ra head letter?

And how do you know this isn't an la with a sa head letter? Is it a, is it a la with a ra head letter? Or is it a ra with a, with a la bottom letter?

Is this a sa, is this a sa head letter on top of a la? Or is this a, a la subjoining an, an, what is the main letter here? How do you decide?

Which one has been stuck on, above or below? In, in each case of these two, the top letter is the, is the main letter, and la is a subjoined letter, okay? Just so you know.

Why do you have to know that? When you use a dictionary, this will be alphabetized under? Ra, and not la, okay?

If you go, if you think this is a head letter ra on a la, and you go looking in a dictionary under la to find the word, to find the word thai, you won't find anything. Because it's not under L, it's under R, okay? This is a ra with a la under it, and it's not a la with a ra stuck on top.

Got it? Just knob. Okay, same here.

Sa has a subjoined la, and it's not that the la has a superjoined sa, okay? But those are two tricky ones when you're using a paper dictionary. Paper dictionaries will probably go out of style.

If you use a computer, it doesn't matter. But just in case you ever have to alphabetize a list of Tibetan names, for example, in a bibliography, you should know that. Okay, one last thing, and we're done with the lataks, all right?

There's one big exception for the lataks, and I'm going to take a separate piece of paper to show that, because it's so fascinating to almost nobody. Okay, so I'm going to write a couple words here. Let's say, okay, I'm going to jorlok this, okay?

Please jorlok with me. When you have a prefix letter, which we haven't learned yet, I think, this will be, in jorlok, you say au, da, naro, and then jorloking is a cumulative. You say what you have so far.

Au, da, naro, do, ka, then you say the whole thing together, ndok. So it sounds like ndok, okay? That's the effect of this particular prefix letter, which we'll learn later.

It causes a thing called prenasal. Prenasal means an N sound, or an M sound, or a NA sound, just before another consonant. So say ndok, okay?

Ndok, okay, good. Here's a normal head letter, a ra head letter on top of a D, and it means, this will be pronounced ra, da, dak, and it's a cumulative, da, naro, do, ka, do, ndok, do, ndok, do, dok, do, okay, that's what these things are, okay? Say ndok, dok, dok, dok.

This is a real English D. This is a real English D with an N sound in front of it. This letter does not exist in English.

It's a low tone, da, voice, dok, dok, okay, dok, got it? This means to apply a name or something like that. With a slightly different spelling, it means to apply a name.

Like, ming dok means a nickname, okay? Ming dok, applied name or extra name means a nickname. This dok means a dirt clod, a clod of dirt, okay?

This tok means to have a suspicion that somebody's doing something. Tokpa, okay? So if you don't pronounce these right, you're going to get in trouble.

Are you throwing dirt on me, or you're suspicious of me, and you just want to say, you know, I just want to give you a nickname or something, okay? By the way, well, we'll learn later, but there's another prefix letter. You could have used ma as a prefix letter here, okay?

And then the mdok would also be prenasal, and it would change the meaning to color, a color, red, white, blue, or mdok, okay? So it's important to know these three things. Same mdok, dok, English D, dok, tok, tok.

Why are we talking about this when we're talking about lataks? We're in the middle of lataks. We have one more lata to go.

It was an exception. Here's the exception. What's this letter, backwards e?

Sa, low tone s sound, sa, sa. High tone sa means dirt. Low tone sa means to eat something.

If you mix them up, you're going to ask someone to be eating dirt, probably. Okay, say sa, hla sa, land of the gods, or sa. You know, like, I don't know, banana sa, eat a banana, okay?

Now, it becomes an exception. By the way, a full size sa would be about this big. And we reduce the size and we add a latak, okay?

So say, sa, latak, prenasal, da, mdak, okay? Sa, latak, mdak. Total, total exception, because all the other lataks were?

High tone la, right, high tone la, la. So when you get to this one, don't make a mistake. It's not only not a la, it's a d sound.

It's not only not a d sound, it's a prenasal d sound, da. Most famous word with this is dawa, meaning a moon, okay? Moon is actually a word that means a second of anything, a repetition of anything.

So, I want to show you how this prenasal behaves after an open vowel, after a syllable that ends in a vowel, without a closure, how does it sound? So let's give this example. This is sa, say sa, katak, ka, shabkyu, ku, okay?

And then let's add the da after it. Say ku, da, ku, da. And because this is an open vowel with no suffix letter, it gets smushed into each other as kunda, okay?

Kunda. And that means, that's the honorific—what does ku mean? Holy body, it's the honorific for body.

What would be the double or the repeat of a body? It's the Tibetan word, honorific word, for someone's wife or husband. Because you are the second body of one being.

It's a very beautiful word, okay? And this is honorific, this is high honorific. You would refer to a high aristocrat in the old days, or a prince, or, you know, a married lama, one of the sects that have partners, you would call kunda, okay?

You are the second half of that body. You are the repeat or the mirror of that body. It's called kunda, okay?

So there you feel the—you get the prenasal after an open vowel, and it's much stronger, okay? Say, kunda. Okay, good.

So the one exception in all the lataks which normally become high-tone la, is a sa latak, and it becomes da, okay? Da. If you pronounce it with a prenasal, Tibetans will be very impressed.

And they'll also know what the heck you're talking about, okay? If you don't—if you miss the prenasals, you could be saying color, or attach, or dirt clod, or I'm suspicious of you, okay? And you got to know these differences, okay?

So that concludes our little vignette on la sub-join letters. We're not quite done with the sub-joins, those are the three major sub-joins. And we'll be moving on to two minor sub-joins which were still important, but you won't see them that frequently.

The order I have given them in which was ya, ra, not ra, ra, and la. That's the alphabetical order, okay? So if a letter takes—if something takes multiple sub-joins, like ka, you'll look in the alphabet— you'll look in a dictionary for the latak first.

The yatak first, ka, yatak, ya. And then you'll look for the ratak, ka, ratak, ta. And then you'll look for the latak, which ka, latak, la, okay?

But that will be the dictionary order, okay, if you're looking for them. All right, see you next time for our two minor sub-join letters.