Tibetan pinyin
Official transcription system for the Tibetan language in China
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Tibetan pinyin is a phonetic transcription, and as such its spelling is tied to actual pronunciation (although tone is not marked). Wylie on the other hand is a transliteration system, where mechanical conversion to and from Tibetan and Latin script is possible. Within academic circles, Wylie transliteration (with a v replacing the apostrophe) is more commonly used.
Overview
Onsets overview
Independent onsets in the initial syllable of a word are transcribed as follows:
For more general case, see § Onsets.
Vowels and final consonant
The 17 vowels of the Lhasa dialect are represented in as follows:
Ending a syllable, -r is usually not pronounced, but it lengthens the preceding vowel. In the same place, -n usually nasalises the preceding vowel. Consonants at the end of a syllable are transcribed as follows:
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Single syllable orthography
The tone of a syllable depends mostly on its initial consonant. In this table, each initial is given in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) with the vowel a and a tone mark to present tone register (high/low).
Onsets
Below is a comprehensive transcription table of onsets of an initial syllable of a word. If the syllable to transcribe is not the first syllable of a word, see § Onset variation.
Rimes
Below is a comprehensive transcription table of rimes of a final syllable of a word, with IPA transcription for the Lhasa dialect. If the syllable to transcribe is not the final syllable of a word, see § Coda variation.
Take "ཨ" to be the consonant (not "◌").
Intersyllable influence
Onset variation
- Bare low aspirated variation
- k*, q*, t*, p*, x*, s*, ky*, ch* become g*, j*, d*, b*, ?*, ?*, gy*, zh* respectively
- pa* (་བ) and po* (་བོ) become wa and wo respectively
Coda variation
Sometimes there is intersyllabic influence:
Encoding
The IETF language tag for Tibetan pinyin is bo-Latn-pinyin.