Серия «Тибетский язык», курс 1: Тибетский алфавит, занятие 15

[Speaker 1]
Hi, this is Geshe Michael Roach with the next installment of learning to be a Tibetan translator. We have finished all of the ten suffix letters, discussing them, and now it's time to go on to the prefix letters. You are close to being able to pronounce anything in the Tibetan language, okay?

Thank goodness, Tibetan language is predictable and unambiguous almost totally. So, once you learn the rules of how to pronounce it, you can pronounce anything, even if you've never seen it before. You can pronounce it correctly.

English is not like that, for example. There are similar words that mean like two. T-W-O or T-O or T-O-O, you know, and there are lots of exceptions.

But in Tibetan, once you learn the basic rules, you can pronounce anything correctly. And a listener would think that you knew what you were saying, if you read a scripture. You can read a scripture perfectly and not understand a single word of it, but you can pronounce it correctly, okay?

Which is cool. So, we're going to do—tonight, we're going to do the five prefix letters, which are KHA, DTA, PA, MA, and A. A prefix letter means, usually, that it's a letter which is added at the front of a word, as in the English word, know, where the...this letter has become silent, okay? And it just has effects on the meaning, and it's not pronounced, okay? So normally, a prefix letter in Tibetan is not pronounced. In some combinations, when a prefix letter appears in the second syllable of a two-syllable word, it might be pronounced by accident, like, koin-chok.

No, that's not a good example. Or, if I think of one, khyam-dro, like that. There are effects, but normally it's silent, okay?

And we can divide them into two—I think we can divide them into two groups. The first three—by the way, this is alphabetical order. The first three, and the second, and the last two, have slightly different influences in the word.

So let's just take the first one, for example. We had, in the previous class, this combination. I'm going to just review with you, I'm going to test you.

We had these two combinations. This was na, sa, ne. And this was na, da, ne.

By the way, this...this combination would be somewhere between, in length, okay? Say, ne, ne, ne. Okay, cool.

This one means parrot, if you care, okay, in certain combinations, all right? Ne, ne, ne, ne, ne, ne. Okay, good.

Three nes, all right? The English pronunciation in each case would be spelled ne, okay? You have to understand that.

All right, so now, we're going to take this... this combination right here, and we're going to add a prefix letter to it, okay? And the way...the name for a prefix letter in Tibetan is ngun juk, okay? I'll spell it here. Okay. Say, ngun, juk, ngun, juk.

You remember that, nga by itself is low tone, all the fourth column is low tone, nga, nga. You add a head letter, it becomes high tone, nga, nga. Say, nga, nga, sa, na, ta, nga.

So this is ngun, because we umlaut it before a na suffix letter. O became u, okay? Ngun.

And then juk means to enter or to be applied. Ngun means before, okay? So ngun juk means prefix letter, okay?

A silent...normally a silent prefix letter. So, that's the name for a prefix letter. These five are called ngun juk nga, the five prefix letters.

But, when you jor lok, what's jor lok mean, do you remember? When you spell out loud, c-a-t-c-a-t, you indicate the presence of a prefix letter with the suffix o. So I should have covered that when we did the suffix o.

So, you don't say ka-na-sa, you say kau. Say, kau, na, sa, ne, kau, na, sa, ne, ne. A little bit lengthened, right?

Ne. So this by itself, ne, means from or barley, okay? Like if you're reading a text on Homa, on fire offerings, and you come to ne, be careful, it might be barley, the barley that you're going to add to the fire.

But then when you add the prefix letter, it has certain effects on the main letter, okay? In the case of the fourth column, which are all... the four nasals of the navel column are low tone, nga, nga, nga, nga, nga, ma.

They move up the throat in accordance with Sanskrit, ancient Sanskrit principles. Nga is made in the throat, nga is made in the back palate, nga is made dental, behind the front teeth, and ma is labial, made with the lips. So they move up the throat, okay?

Nga, nga, nga, ma. These are the four. So the effect of any prefix letter on a fourth column is that it rises from low tone to high tone.

So if you say ne, say ne. A Tibetan thinks you're saying from. But if you say ne, say ne, it means a very common verb to stay, to stay or a location.

So if you don't know this, how can a Tibetan ever understand what the heck you're saying? And I would say 99% of foreigners who learn Tibetan don't learn this. So Tibetans have trouble understanding what they're saying.

And Tibetans don't know enough about their own language to verbalize what it is that's wrong. They don't know these rules. So say, ko, na, sorry, ko, na, sa, ne.

So normally you give the effects of the prefix letter in the jorlok already. You don't say ko, na, sa. You say ko, na, sa, ne.

Say ne. OK, good. And we'll get into accent sometime.

We'll do a class on accent. Nepa means to stay. Ne means to be a place.

So we'll do that some other time. So the effect of any prefix letter on the fourth column is raises it, OK? Raises it to a high tone.

OK, raises the tone. I think let's go ahead with some more of these. So prefix letters can be understood in terms of the effect they have on the main letter.

And the effect they have on the main letter is standard according to the column that the main letter is in. So that's another benefit of having learned about the four columns of the Tibetan language, of learning to conceptualize the Tibetan alphabet in terms of columns, because the behavior of each letter in the column is the same, OK? So let's go to the first column.

Let's do a prefix letter on a first column, OK? Psst, psst, psst, psst, psst, psst, psst, psst, psst, psst. Say, what are you going to say to indicate that this is a prefix letter?

Kao, kao. OK, don't forget it's not a G. It's a eyebrow raiser, kao.

Kao, da, naro, to, nga, tong, like tong len, OK, giving and taking, OK? This is the giving part. It's related to a whole family of syllables that indicate sending, OK?

Like tong, and things like that. So tong. Now, so we're trying to illustrate the effect of a prefix letter on a first column letter.

The first column letters are? Great. Say again.

Ka-cha-ta-ba-tsa. Ka-cha-ta-ba-tsa? I got you, man.

Ka-cha-ta-ba-tsa. Moving up the throat. Ka-cha-ta-ba, and then sa breaks the pattern, OK?

Ka-cha-ta-ba-tsa. OK, ka-cha-ta-ba-tsa. First column, what are the two characteristics of the first column?

Unaspirated and high tone. So can you make it higher? No.

Ergo, therefore, the effect of a prefix letter on the first column is nothing. It can't do anything. So why put it there?

Yeah, just to change the spelling. Like the difference between this and this, OK? It's just so you know what it means.

It doesn't have any effect on the sound, because it's already high tone. It's already as strong as it can be, OK? So, now that you know all the...

Now that you know all of the... What do you call it? The columns.

You can predict the sounds. Like if I put this sound... If I wrote this, how would you spell it out loud?

Zhuo-long. Kao-cha. Na-ro-jo.

Da. Um loud and shorten. Chit.

Dorje chitpa. Dorje chitpa varje chedka. Diamond cutter, OK?

Chit. Say kao. Cha.

Na-ro. Cho. Da.

Chit. Nothing happens to the... It can't get any higher, it can't get any stronger, OK?

Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa, all the same. Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa, all the same. Nothing's going to happen with a prefix letter, OK?

So we've covered the effect on the fourth column, which are nasals, which get... Higher. Higher, which means if they don't have anything in front of them or on top of them, don't make them high.

Don't say na when you mean nga, because somebody will think you're talking about a drum instead of... Me. Alright, OK, alright?

So learn to make your fourth columns low, because then when you get here, you can do the right thing, which is to raise them, OK? Make them high tone. We already covered the first column, OK?

Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa. Second column has some prefix letters, not a lot, OK? They have some prefix letters.

I can think of, for example... I can't think of any case where any of these is used. The ma, which we're going to treat later, does come before second column.

What are the characteristics of the second column? First, give me the second column. Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa.

Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa. Is it high tone or low tone? It's high.

It's high, it's the same as the first column, but it's... Aspirated. First column, ka-cha, da-ba-tsa, not aspirated.

Second column, I mean, not much. Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa, as if you were tired. Ka-cha, da-ba-tsa, OK?

Cannot go higher. So what's the effect of a prefix letter on the second column? Nothing, OK?

Nothing. So for example, ko-wa means necessary stuff. To-to means high, and like that.

It just doesn't change, OK? So effect on the first column of a prefix letter? Nothing.

Second column? Nothing. Third column?

Got higher, got higher. The nasals got higher. Na-na, nya-nya, na-na, ma-ma.

OK, the four nasals, OK? I think we'll cut this class here, and we'll continue in the second class on prefix letters with these final two. And we have one more column to talk about, which it takes some time, OK?

What's the column we haven't talked about? The third column. Those are the voiced low tone.

Ka-cha-da-ba-tsa, vibrating here in the voice box. Ka-cha-da-ba-tsa, the effect of a prefix letter on those we'll talk about in the next class. And then we'll talk about special effects of these last two.

Thank you for coming. I'll see you at the next exciting prefix letter class.