Серия «Тибетский язык», курс 1: Тибетский алфавит, занятие 17

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to the exciting subject of Tibetan Prefix Letters. We have a little wrap-up to do, which will make your pronunciation perfect, and then we'll be able to move on to some other things in the Tibetan language. We're almost ready, we've almost completed all the sounds of Tibetan, and you're almost ready to pronounce any Tibetan word correctly.

So, we have just a little bit more to do on these last two of the five prefix letters, which are pre-nasalizing, which make a slight nasal sound like, uh, or mm, before the main letter of the syllable. Okay, so, we have some more comments to... I wanted to show you where to pull the pre-nasal from.

And, you can also use this in the study of Sanskrit, if you want to make your Sanskrit more correct. And, frankly, I don't know any Westerner or many Indians who pronounce it correctly. So, you can use this principles also to improve your pronunciation of Sanskrit, if you wish.

So, I'd like you to give me the third column, and then I'm going to ask you to give me the fourth column. Third column. Third column.

Okay, good. Okay, good. Good.

Now give me the pre... the corresponding nasal, the fourth column. Nga.

Nga. Okay. Go up your mouth, go up your mouth.

That's a palate. Dental, meaning not really dental, but behind the front teeth. Nga.

And then labial. Ma. Ma.

Then, we can cancel this one for this discussion, okay? So, anytime you need a pre-nasal sound, in Tibetan or Sanskrit, take it from the corresponding letter of the fourth column, okay? So, for example, the word for community in Sanskrit...

Sangha. Okay? Sangha.

You don't say sam-ga. The British, who invented the way of transcribing Sanskrit, used an M for all the pre-nasals, with a dot under it, and all proceeding... all successing...

successive generations mispronounced Sanskrit. And sam-sa-ra became sam-sa-ra. And Sanskrit itself, you know, sam-scrit.

And, you know, it's a tragedy. A linguistic tragedy. So anyway, sang-ga.

Alright? Then... Any examples?

Nja. Okay? Nja.

Alright? It's hard to distinguish between... n...

n... nga, right? And...

n... nja. But, if you take the word pancha, for example, which means five.

But by the way, the n came in... the nya came into n in English, and the cha came in as g, and it became... finger.

Because there are five. Pancha. So, pancha means five in Sanskrit.

Like pancha ratnas, the five jewels or something like that. So the prenasal for nja is nya. So you don't say pancha...

technically you should say pan... pancha. Pancha.

Or panjala means a tent in Sanskrit. It's a tantra named the tent. Pan...

panjara. Okay? So it's hard for a foreigner, for a non-Tibetan or non-Indian, to...

to hear the difference between these two. Sang... nga, or senge meaning...

which used to be singha. It's like n-h-a, okay? Because the prenasal for h is n.

Singha, okay? But that's another story. Which is why they call it Singapore, not Simgu Kapur.

But that's another story, okay? Nja, okay? And...

how about before a d? Nda. Yeah, I'm trying to think of an example.

Pandita, mandala. That's a different row in Sanskrit, which is the retroflex nasal. Retroflex dental.

But you can say pandita, or mandala. You don't say maññadala. And you don't say maṅgadala.

Because you... you stick to the prenasal that comes from the same row. If it's dental, it's dental.

If it's palatal, it's palatal. If it's guttural, it's guttural. And if it's labial, it's labial.

Got it? Alright, so we can say pandita. So anyway, it would come out like this.

Nda, okay? We had the word... da meaning past, or transcendent, or to...

sorry, past... sorry, to be. Ancient word da, alright?

Then we had the prenasal, which was nda. Which means to transcend. And it's also found in the word bhagavan, which is chomdennde.

Chomdennde. The one gone beyond, okay? So, nda, and then nja, and nga, okay?

Now give me the... give me the prenasal for the labials and you're done.

[Speaker 2]
Mba.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, mba, okay? Okay? Okay?

So, if you're gonna prenasal before a B, which is made with your lips, the nasal has to be the labial nasal, which is the M, okay? Mba. We had kaivalya, which was...

mba shikpa. Mba shikpa, okay? Mba.

So you give a small M sound. So, if you wanna... you know, we could go forever, but...

if you want your Tibetan to be totally accurate, and if you wanna be accurate in Sanskrit, you should learn where the floating nasals, meaning, their value depends on the next syllable, on the next consonant to come. If the next consonant to come is a G, you're gonna use nga. If the next consonant to come is a...

any kind of palatal, cha, cha, or ja, you're gonna use nga, okay? So we can expand this to the second and third rows also, for Sanskrit purposes. If it ka, or ka, or ka, any prenasal is gonna be the same from your throat.

And these are gonna be from your palate. And these are gonna be from your dental, which means behind your front teeth, not really on your front teeth. And then the labial is gonna be made with your lips.

So that's where you pull the right... Then there's a... there's consonant...

there are consonants like H or S. When they have a floating prenasal in front of them, you use an N. You use an N.

You treat them as if they were dentals. So... the cycle of life?

Saṃsāra. Like the French, you know, saṃsāra. Not samsara.

It's totally wrong. I don't believe there's any M followed by an S in Sanskrit that I can think of... as a prenasal.

And then... How about... non-violence?

Ahinsa. Okay. Or like that.

Or... Singha. A lion.

Okay. Singha. Not Simha.

Okay. So the prenasal for H and S are also the dental. You should know that, if you want to pronounce Sanskrit correctly.

All right. Can you help me flip this? And we have one more short subject, and we're done with our prefix letters.

Thank you. There are some odd... There's a...

I can think of two tonight, and there's probably more. There are some weirdos, okay? So I'm going to give you two weirdos that I can think of.

When you have a DHA prefix letter before a... BHA BSKYANG, meaning with no other vowel sign on it, the B sound changes to... W sound.

The B sound changes to a W sound. So this becomes... WANG.

When there's no other vowel sign, the effect of a DHA on a BHA is it changes to WANG. For no good reason. I've never heard any explanation of it.

It's just the way it is. Okay? I always tell people, if they complain, I say, write to Tumi Sambodha, care of 10th century or 9th century, you know?

Don't bug me. Right here, okay? Say WANG.

There's a little bit of a high toning here. WANG. Little bit.

WANG. Okay? WANG.

Okay. Now let's add a... and see what it does to that.

Say THAO. WHA. Okay, you anticipate the change, when you jorlo.

You don't say BHA. Okay? You say THAO WHA.

YATAK. YAH. YAH.

YAH. RAH. YAR.

YAR. Okay? This YAR means summer.

The season of summer. Okay? And it's pronounced...

if you care, it's a little bit of a high tone. YAR. Okay?

By the way, there's also a verb... Say KHAO. KHAO.

YAR.

[Speaker 2]
YAR.

[Speaker 1]
RAH. YAR.

[Speaker 2]
YAR.

[Speaker 1]
YAR. YAR. I'm sorry, YAR.

YAR.

[Speaker 2]
YAR.

[Speaker 1]
Same pronunciation, okay? If you don't know... if a Tibetan says YAR, you don't know which one it is.

Okay? If they are... owe you money, it probably means...

this one, which means to borrow. Okay? Or to loan.

So, Tibetans have trouble with the English distinction between borrow and loan. The word is the same. You just have to have a reflexive on it.

YAR CHUNG means I received a borrowing. YAR BRTZE means I gave a borrowing. Okay?

So, this is summer. This is borrow or loan. And they are the same pronunciation.

Exactly, okay? YAR. High tone YAR.

I'm gonna give you one more example. Well, let's do this one. Let's add...

a SHAB GYUD... and a MA. TAO.

TAO. TAO. JAR LO.

Piece it up. Pieces. Pieces.

TAO WA. SHAB GYUD. BU.

MA. UMA. UMA.

Okay? So here, it's not a W. It's a...

It's a... It's a U. Okay?

So that's tricky. This is not WU. It's UMA.

What's UMA? Middle way. Middle way.

Or the central channel. Okay? So, whereas this becomes a W, this becomes just a straight U sound.

Okay? I'll give you one more example, then the rest you can figure out on your own. Um...

[Speaker 2]
TAO.

[Speaker 1]
TAO. WA. WA.

[Speaker 2]
YA TAG YA. Oh.

[Speaker 1]
YA. YA TAG... YA.

YA. High tone. YA.

GYI GYU. YI. NGA.

SA. This is secondary suffix letter we'll get to in our next series. You know, in our next installment.

It just occurred to me I have to teach you secondary suffix letters. This is pronounced YING. Say YING.

Okay, YING is the word for DATU or realm. And it can mean the ether. It's a very mystical word.

It's a sweet word. You know... Uh...

If you want to name a band, you might want to get that word YING in there. I don't know. It's a very mystical word.

It means the... the realm of IS. Sometimes I try to say it's the realm of IS.

YING. It can mean emptiness. Okay?

Or it can mean the ether. Or it can mean a... a realm of the mystical world or something.

YING. Say YING. So now you...

There you get a pretty good taste. I don't know if I'm... if I've been exhaustive.

But this is a good taste of all the possible effects of a DA on a BA. And... and the strange things that can happen.

Okay? Don't blame me. I didn't invent it.

Okay? Okay. Uh...

VASU BANDHU. YIG NYIN. So it's the same thing here except the GOS suffix letter.

YIG NYIN. That YIG is extremely rare, and it means the richest of the earth. Uh...

VASU. Okay? Uh...

So that's... that's... I think those are all the...

strange things that can happen with a prefix letter that I can think of off the top of my head. Uh... In our next class, I think we'll be wrapping up with what we call secondary suffix letters, of which you see an example here, where there's a primary...

there's a... there's a initial suffix letter, and then there's a secondary suffix letter. And how those work, you will find out in the next exciting installment of Tibetan Language.

Thank you.