The Alphabet
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The Tibetan alphabet consists of 30 consonants and four vowels. The consonants are traditionally arranged in a set of four columns and eight rows.
You can click on each letters' phonetic equivalent to hear a native Tibetan say it. Use the download options on the right to save files locally.
| The Thirty Consonants and Their Pronunciation | ||||||||
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 | |||||
| Row 1 | ! | ka | " | kha | # | ga | $ | nga |
| Row 2 | % | cha | & | chha | ' | ja | ( | nya |
| Row 3 | ) | ta | * | tha | + | da | , | na |
| Row 4 | . | pa | / | pha | 0 | ba | 1 | ma |
| Row 5 | 2 | tsa | 3 | tsha | 4 | dza | 5 | wa |
| Row 6 | 6 | zha | 7 | za | 8 | a | 9 | ya |
| Row 7 | : | ra | ; | la | < | sha | = | sa |
| Row 8 | > | ha | ? | a | ||||
Each consonant has an inherent "a" sound. There are four other vowels in Tibetan. The vowels are not letters by themselves, but are drawn either above or below the consonant they modify. In the example below we use the last consonant of the alphabet as an example.
| The Four Vowels and Their Pronunciation | ||||||||
| Vowels |  |
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| Example | ?m | i | ?v | u | ?{ | e | ?} | o |