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Standard Tibetan language

Standard Tibetan
བོད་སྐད་ Bod skad / Böké
ལྷ་སའི་སྐད་ Lha-sa'i skad / Lhaséké
Native to Tibet Autonomous Region, China, Nepal, India
Native speakers
(1.2 million cited 1990 census)
Early forms
Tibetan alphabet
Tibetan Braille
Official status
Official language in
China (Tibet Autonomous Region),
Nepal (Upper Mustang)
Regulated by Committee for the Standardisation of the Tibetan Language
Language codes
ISO 639-1 bo
ISO 639-2  (B)
 (T)
ISO 639-3
Glottolog tibe1272
Linguasphere 70-AAA-ac
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Standard Tibetan is the most widely spoken form of the Tibetic languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang (Central Tibetan) dialect. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Lhasa Tibetan. Tibetan is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The written language is based on Classical Tibetan and is highly conservative.

Like many languages, Standard Tibetan has a variety of language registers:

Tibetan is an ergative language. Grammatical constituents broadly have head-final word order:

Unlike many other languages of East Asia and especially Chinese, another Sino-Tibetan language, there are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting in Tibetan although words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.

In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Vedic Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.

Tibetan is written with an Indic script, with a historically conservative orthography that reflects Old Tibetan phonology and helps unify the Tibetan-language area.

Wylie transliteration is the most common system of romanization used by Western scholars in rendering written Tibetan using the Latin alphabet (such as employed on much of this page). Tibetan pinyin, however, is the official romanization system employed by the government of the People's Republic of China. Certain names may also retain irregular transcriptions, such as Chomolungma for Mount Everest.


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