Numerals
Learning to count is not very difficult. You should first memorize counting from 1 to 10, and then to 100.
| Tibetan Numerals: 0 - 29 | |||||
| ༠ | ཀླད་སྒོར་ | ༡༠ | བཅུ་ | ༢༠ | ཉི་ཤུ་ |
| ༡ | གཅིག་ | ༡༡ | བཅུ་གཅིག་ | ༢༡ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་གཅིག་ |
| ༢ | གཉིས་ | ༡༢ | བཅུ་གཉིས་ | ༢༢ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་གཉིས་ |
| ༣ | གསུམ་ | ༡༣ | བཅུ་གསུམ་ | ༢༣ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་གསུམ་ |
| ༤ | བཞི་ | ༡༤ | བཅུ་བཞི་ | ༢༤ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་བཞི་ |
| ༥ | ལྔ | ༡༥ | བཅོ་ལྔ་ | ༢༥ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་ལྔ་ |
| ༦ | དྲུག | ༡༦ | བཅུ་དྲུག་ | ༢༦ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་དྲུག་ |
| ༧ | བདུན་ | ༡༧ | བཅུ་བདུན་ | ༢༧ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་བདུན་ |
| ༨ | བརྒྱད་ | ༡༨ | བཅོ་བརྒྱད་ | ༢༨ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་བརྒྱད་ |
| ༩ | དགུ་ | ༡༩ | བཅུ་དགུ་ | ༢༩ | ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་དགུ་ |
Note how the spelling of 15 and 18 breaks away from the rule. For 15 the pronunciation is "chö-nga" while 18 is pronounced"chub-gye" (not "cho-gye" as might be expected). There are some other pronunciation variations in the Lhasa dialect. Those will be made clear when we have added sound recordings to this page.
Table with 30 - 100 will be added later.
Usage in a Sentence
The numeral is always placed after the noun in a sentence. You would say "book two", and not "two book". When a noun is qualified with a numeral, it should not be in the plural. You should say "book three", and not "books three" or "three books" . If there is an adjective following the noun, then the numeral should follow the adjective.
Examples:
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