Sound correspondences between Tibetic languages

Tibetic languages have high levels of dialectal variation; speakers of Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan cannot typically interpret speakers of Amdo Tibetan varieties.^[1] Descending from Old Tibetan, there are 50 recognized Tibetic languages, which branch into more than 200 dialects, which can be grouped into eight dialect continua. This article discusses sound correspondences between Old Tibetan and four modern Tibetic languages.

Tibetic languages belong to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.^[2] All Tibetic languages descend from Old Tibetan, much like how all Romance languages descend from Classical Latin.^[3]

Old Tibetan, like Proto-Tibeto-Burman and Proto-Sino-Tibetan, did not contain tone and used agglutinative morphology primarily consisting of single consonant affixes.^[4][5] Several Tibetic languages, such as Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan, joined the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area.^[6] In these languages, the affixes underwent complete loss or fossilization.

This table shows onset sound correspondences between different Tibetic languages.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} These rules are near-universally applicable, but differ in a few contexts; see Additional sound correspondences for more information.

This table shows rime sound correspondences between different Tibetic languages.^{[6][8][9][11][12]} These rules are near-universally applicable for the final syllables of words, but may differ in other contexts; see Sound correspondences between Tibetic languages#Irregular sound correspondences for more information.

The exact pronunciation of the tones in Lhasa Tibetan depends on the initial-derived tone and the exact rime.^[13] In Khams Tibetan, 1 denotes /˥/, 2 denotes /˦/, 3 denotes /˨/, and 4 denotes /˩/.

In multisyllabic words, the first syllable's tone transforms into /˥/ if the onset gives it a high tone (H) and transforms into /˩/ if the onset gives it a low tone (L).^[14]

The tone of the consecutive syllables change according to the following table:^[15]

Several words and syllabic affixes in Lhasa Tibetan do not follow the regular rules for deriving tone and instead receive their tone from the noun or verb they modify. These words and affixes include མ ⟨ma⟩ (negation word), ཨ ⟨a⟩ (second person imperative marker), ཏུ ⟨tu⟩ (first person plural imperative marker), ལ ⟨la⟩ (dative and locative suffix), and ཝ ⟨wa⟩ (agenitive suffix).

Colloquial Lhasa Tibetan (but not formal readings) omit ཝ ⟨wa⟩ when it appears as the final syllable in a word. The vowel in the previous syllable lengthens if it existed as /a/, /o/, or /e/ in Old Tibetan; it forms a diphthong pronounced as [o] followed by the vowel if it existed as /i/ or /u/ in Old Tibetan.

Noninitial syllables always deaspirate any written aspirated consonants. If a syllable with an open coda in Old Tibetan (no written final consonant) is followed by a syllable with a prefixed or superjoined letter, then the prefixed or superjoined letter becomes the final consonant of the previous syllable.

If a word contains [i], [u], or [y] along with what would result in [a], [e], or [o], then [a] becomes [ə], [e] becomes [e̝], and [o] becomes [o̝].

Bisyllabic words with a first syllable possessing tones 1 or 2 tend to retain the first syllable's tone in the second syllable, although some speakers pronounce both syllables according to the standard rules in certain words.^[10] Trisyllabic words have a falling contour in the final syllable. Quadrisyllabic words are pronounced like two consecutive bisyllabic words.

If a syllable with an open coda in Old Tibetan (no written final consonant) is followed by a syllable with a prefixed or superjoined letter, then the prefixed or superjoined letter becomes the final consonant of the previous syllable.^[7]

• Amdo Tibetan
• Khams Tibetan
• Lhasa Tibetan
• THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription
• Tibetan pinyin
• Wylie transliteration