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Ten Years Tibetan in 10 minutes

  Tags: Tibetan
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago

322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 57 of 62
04 April 2012 at 9:02pm | IP Logged 
Today was the Chinese festival for recognizing your ancestors, commonly known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. As much as it is a time to remember those that went before, it is also a celebration of the coming Spring. It's a bittersweet kind of holiday, it seems, but one that captures the duality of existence.

In that spirit, I've found a few resources for Classical Tibetan and after my Chinese studies, I devote a small window of time on a language study that is for pure curiosity and fun.

The chief text I am using is:

The Precious Key, An Introduction to Literary Tibetan for Dharma Students
by McComas Taylor and Lama Choedak Yuthok

The timetable:

Read a chapter every two weeks: 14 days, 14 sessions of ten minutes each day, minimum.

The text has 20 chapters; I'll be done in 40 weeks.

So by the end of the year, taking very small steps, I will have achieved a greater understanding of one of my "someday" languages.

Let's begin...


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zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago

322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 58 of 62
06 April 2012 at 9:18pm | IP Logged 
Today's lesson:

The Tibetan alphabet is composed of 30 letters, arranged in eight rows of three or four letters.

It's learned, traditionally, by row. Today I relearned how to form the letters of the first row, along with the attendant pronunciation.

The velar sounds of Row 1

ཀ ka
ཁ kha
ག ga
ང nga

Other resources to supplement The Precious Key:

The Classical Tibetan Language by Stephan V.Beyer



Edited by zhanglong on 06 April 2012 at 9:44pm

1 person has voted this message useful



zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago

322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 59 of 62
06 April 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged 
Today's lesson:

Row 2: The palatal consonants

ཅ      ca
ཆ      cha           
ཇ      ja            
ཉ      nya

The verbs "ni" and "min"

Tibetan word Order is Subject Object Verb, which is different from both English and Chinese.

di - this
ni - to be, is
min - to not be, isn't

My first two Tibetan sentences:

di ni lama yin

This is the guru.

di ni lama min

This is not the guru.
1 person has voted this message useful



zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago

322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 60 of 62
08 April 2012 at 12:33am | IP Logged 
Chapter 01 is done now. The great thing about this text is that the chapters are short, the theory is kept at a minimum, and there are plenty of exercises.

For tomorrow's entry, I'll attempt to do some of them, but for now, I'm trying to find an online Tibetan dictionary that I know how to navigate.
1 person has voted this message useful



zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago

322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 61 of 62
08 April 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged 
Today, I only practiced recognizing and saying the first 8 letters, and adding the chapter's vocabulary to a database I am building. Ten minutes may not seem like a lot of time (and it isn't), but it's amazing how much you can get done when you are completely focused on something.

1 person has voted this message useful



zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago

322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 62 of 62
09 April 2012 at 5:51pm | IP Logged 
For the rest of 2012, new entries for this log will be incorporated into my Chinese Odyssey log. It's much easier to search and write one log, than to write three.


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