Background
The Tibetan language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It is the main language of about 6 million people living in Tibet, parts of Nepal, India, Bhutan, as well as in exile communities all over the world.
Spoken Tibetan varies a great deal between different regions and localities. Distinct dialects have developed and it can even be difficult for Tibetans to understand each other if they do not come from the same area. Written Tibetan, on the other hand, is the same everywhere. This is especially true for religious texts.
The Tibetan script was created early in the 7th century AD. The great Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo sent one of his ministers, Thume Sambota , to India, to create an alphabet for the Tibetan language. The script Thume Sambota created has evolved through the centuries and today Tibetan is written in a few different types of scripts. The two most common are U-chen (literally: Big Head) and U-me (literally: Headless). U-chen is the script you see on our website. This script is used in books and other publications while U-me is primarily used for handwriting, although it can be seen in some modern books.
Traditionally the Tibetan language is divided into two categories, colloquial and literary. The literary can be further divided into classical- and modern literary. Classical literary Tibetan evolved around religious writing and has changed very little since the eleventh century. Modern literary Tibetan has come about because of the need to use written Tibetan for other modern purposes, such as literary magazines and newspapers.
The colloquial language is what could be referred to as the everyday language. It has, in some cases, a simple grammar. For example, there are seven Locatives (in, to, for, etc) in the literary language, but only two in the colloquial. The colloquial language is also influenced by local dialects and customs.
This website will, for the most part, concentrate on modern colloquial Tibetan as it is spoken in Central Tibet. In his book Translating Buddhism from Tibetan, Joe B. Wilson points out that Westerners who learn this dialect are more likely to be able to communicate with Tibetans, wherever they come from than are those who have studied other dialects.