Серия «Тибетский язык», курс 1: Тибетский алфавит, занятие 14

[Speaker 1]
Hi, this is Geshe Michael Roach with the next installment of Tibetan, Learning Tibetan Language, Learning to Translate. We've been talking about suffix letters, and we're going to conclude today with the third class on suffix letters. So we said there were ten suffix letters, ขางกาดนอบบลามอารลาสลา, and we have now reached the last exception.

We covered, I think—correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we've covered nine suffix letters, and we only have one left. And it is so odd that it deserves its own class, okay? Which is ฆาง, okay?

So... This is a suffix letter in the Tibetan language, and there's a lot of special things going on with it, alright? So, it's mostly utilized for orthographic purposes, which means the spelling purposes.

It was invented to distinguish between different words, okay? So it doesn't have... Its effect is not that it's predictable, and it's not that it umlauts.

It's just... you just leave the sound whatever it was. Okay, so if...

if the preceding sound was an A, this just remains an A sound. It's just for an example, okay? So, I'd like to give the example...

dhag, okay? So, dhagpa, dhagpa, I think you know dhagpa, like namdak... pure, okay?

Dhagpa means pure, okay? Dhag means self, that's a different sound, and we'll talk about it later. This is the low tone voice sound, with the eyebrows.

Dhag, dhag, okay? It means pure. Dhagpa, dhagpa.

Now, if you add... the suffix letters, A, when... and here's the rule, and you just have to remember it, okay?

First of all, nor... A... never comes by itself in a two-syllable...

in a two-letter syllable. Cannot. You will never see this.

No such thing, okay? Unless the A has something hanging on it, another vowel symbol, okay? But by itself, you will never see this combination, it's not allowed, okay?

A never appears as a suffix letter by itself, with no other vowel symbol, unless... there's a silent prefix letter before the main letter, okay? So, when you see any combination...

when you see this, dhagga, you would pronounce... the main... the main letter would be dhag.

The main letter in the suffix would be... in the... in the syllable would be dhag.

And you have to... you have to learn why that's so, and we'll talk about it more. But, for example, this is not the...

prefix, silent prefix letter, and this is a... a... like the main letter, or something like that, okay?

We are going to... transition now... into the prefix letters, which is a more difficult subject, okay?

But just for your knowledge... knowledge, get it? Okay.

Okay. In English, we also have silent prefix letters. They are orthographical.

They... they tell you... it's a different word with a different meaning.

N-O-W means now, and it means present tense, and in... with a K, it means to know, to understand, okay? So, Tibetan also has silent prefix letters, which we'll be studying next, okay?

Why am I mentioning them now, in the suffix letters, is that, a-kyang, say a-kyang. A suffix letter by itself. By the way, the word in Tibetan for suffix letter...

since we've got a little time in this last unit here... say, je... njuk.

Je... njuk. If you say it quickly, it comes out, je-njuk.

Je-njuk. Okay, say je-njuk. So, this is a pre-nasal, we'll talk about it later, you don't know about those things yet.

But anyway, it creates an N sound between these two. Say je-njuk. Je means after, in Sanskrit it's anu, okay?

It means after. It's a prefix... in Tibetan, like...

consciousness, calm, or something like that, okay? Je means after. Njuk means, do you know?

Like, you know umla-jukpa, you know chun-juk. To enter, to enter, okay? So, or to apply, you can say apply.

So, je-njuk is the Tibetan word for a... suffix letter, because it comes after. Okay, je-njuk, okay?

So, when a acts as a je-njuk, by itself, with no other vowel sign, a-kyang, kyang means only, alone, okay? There's a channel here called the... kyang-mu, same thing.

Maybe. It's just... it doesn't change the sound, okay?

This... if it existed, this would be ka, with or without the a suffix letter, okay? So, it's just for spelling purposes.

In our case here, tak, when you add an a suffix letter, the letter which is the main letter of the syllable, shifts, changes, to the middle one, okay? So, this is pronounced... ga, ga, okay?

Ga. And it means bliss, right? Like ganden.

Or, you know, like that... ga-wo, ananda, okay? So, ga means bliss, right?

Ga, to be happy. This is tak, and this is ga. So, this is tricky, you have to learn this suffix letter.

Whenever you see an akyang, whenever you see an a by itself, the main letter of the syllable is the one in front of it, and not the first one, this is never tak, okay? The main letter is the second one. So, you have to learn...

when you're learning Tibetan, you have to learn to identify, what is gonna be the main letter? Are there any silenced prefixes going on here? This d has the same...

linguistic value as the k, in that it's silent, you see? The d is silent. It has an effect on the main letter, we'll talk about it later.

But this is ga, okay? Now... something happens when you start adding vowel symbols to this a.

So, that's why it deserves its own treatment, alright? For example, there's a... there's a...

a naro, which is a completion symbol in Tibetan, it means end of sentence or end of thought. Lek so, lek so, the Buddha says. That o is a finalizer.

Lek so, period. Lek so, period. In the Heart Sutra, right?

The o symbolizes completion. So, we can add an o vowel... to this suffix a.

And then the whole thing changes, and it becomes a diphthong, okay? Diphthong means... when you have two contiguous vowel sounds, and they are rare in Tibetan, okay?

Tibetan is a single vowel language, with a few exceptions, most of them centering around this final a. So, this is pronounced ga-o, say ga-o. So you have two vowel sounds contiguous, a-o, which is very unusual in Tibetan, okay?

Say ga-o. Ga-o, okay? So that would mean bliss, period.

That end of story, ga-o. You know, what do you get when you combine blah blah blah? Ga-o.

You know, no further conversation, ga-o. Okay? Ga-o, okay?

So, very... not common in Tibetan diphthongs, okay? Let's do another vowel symbol...

on the o suffix letter, that also changes the meaning of words. And I'm gonna give you the example of... Let me think of a good example...

Yeah, okay. Say ba... ya-tak...

jumps up two rows to... cha... cha, it's not bya, okay?

Ba... say ba... ya-tak...

ba with a ya joined under, tak means joined under, makes cha, okay? Cha means a bird, okay? This spelling means a bird, okay?

If you add an a... By the way, I told you that a could never be used... with two letters, there'd have to be another letter in front of it, unless...

it has a vowel symbol attached to it. So this is legal, okay? This is legal.

And... it happens to change in pronunciation to... this gets added to it, but don't stress about it, okay?

I just couldn't think of another example. The a... say a...

shop-kyu... u, okay? A is the closest thing to...

can I say... it's sort of a low tone a, okay? And we talked about it already when we did the alphabet.

But a, shop-kyu, u, say a... shop-kyu, u... is the diminutive in Tibetan.

It means, widow-biddy... whatever, okay? So...

jey is ape. Add jey-u, it becomes a... monkey.

You see what I mean? Cha means a bird. Kyu means a baby bird, or a widow bird, okay?

In English we have E-T-T-E, like... I don't know... little...

a little one. Like... or we say, my key...

instead of my... like, we have... we have diminutives in English also.

So it means a little version of whatever it's talking about. So a, shop-kyu, u... is used as a suffix letter, with a shop-kyu, to mean a small version.

Liyu means a chapter, a small section of text. Pyu, as I said, means a small monkey. And, like that, there are...

Kyu means a... a boy, a youth. Kyu, okay?

So anything ending with an u, you can bet it's a... it's a widow one. Okay?

It's a diminutive, okay? There's one more important use of a as a suffix, and that's a-giku-i. Say, a...

giku-i. And when you're learning Tibetan, and when you're learning to read, and when you're studying with your teacher in a monastery, a-giku-i becomes like a mantra. Say, a...

[Speaker 2]
giku...

[Speaker 1]
i. Uh... Let's use the same word...

uh, cha, which means... burn, okay? And, it can also mean rooster, cha-ti, but that's another story.

Then we add the famous, very famous... a-giku-i, okay? That makes it...

the a-giku-i in English is... apostrophe... s, okay?

Possessive. And we'll learn the different cases of Tibetan grammar. They are modeled after Sanskrit cases.

And you should... if you're going to have fun with the language, you might as well learn... about language itself, because it...

language reflects the mind. If you want to study emptiness, for example, language is a great way to go at it. Linguistics is a great way to go at it.

So, to learn something about linguistics is useful. Um, apostrophe s is the possessive, also called the... genitive.

So, in grammar, you can call it either the possessive, or the genitive. And it means belonging to so-and-so, John's book, Harry's cow, okay? So this one, cha-i, and it's a slight y sound at the end of the word.

So say cha-i. Cha-i. Of the bird.

The bird's... beak or something. Cha-i-chu-to.

The beak... beak of the bird. Okay, cha-i.

Cha-i. But... but when you're...

in a debate, in a monastery, or when you're discussing a text with somebody, it's got to roll off your tongue like apostrophe s. What is it? A-gi-ku-i.

It's got to be like a-gi-ku-i. What are you talking about? A-gi-ku-i.

Say a-gi-ku-i. A... with the gi-ku symbol...

makes i, cha-i. Cha-i. So that's another diphthong.

So these are three, probably... I don't know, 90% of the Tibetan diphthongs we just covered. Very rare in Tibetan for two vowel sounds coming.

Say ga-o. Ga-o. Chi-u.

Chi-u. And cha-i. Cha-i.

Okay? And... and those are the uses of a- as a suffix letter.

So it's kind of in its own category. So to summarize all the suffix letters, there are ten. kang-a-dan-pa-ma-a-ra-la-sa.

And five of them are predictable. And four of them are not so predictable, but have an umlauting effect. A changes to...

e. U changes to... i.

And O changes to... u. Okay?

And so four of them have an umlauting effect. And then a is sort of in a category of its own, as a suffix letter. Okay?

And it has these effects, orthographical effects, so you know what's the main letter to be pronounced. As... as a arkyang, without another symbol of...

of a vowel. And then... a finalizer, when it's used in a sentence, ga-o.

Lek-so, lek-so. And a diminutive, when it's used as a shab-kyu. And a possessive, when it comes as a gi-ku.

Those are all the cases of it that I can really... think of. There are...

Yeah. Bil-bum, for example, is a word for a... a chronicle, a short chronicle, and like that.

Okay? So, we finished all the suffix letters. Our next task is not as easy.

It will be the five prefix letters. And we'll be covering that in the next exciting installment of Tibetan language.