r/tibetanlanguage Nov 12 '25

Tibetan language Discord server

15 Upvotes

Link: https://discord.gg/nGbgGk5KcB

If you study the Tibetan language, or are a native or heritage speaker, please feel free to join this large and well-established Tibetan language Discord server.

At present it mainly functions as a hub for learners of all levels to ask questions, discuss passages and audio, and form a casual community with fellow Tibetan language enthusiasts.

Simply write a few words of introduction about your interest in the Tibetan language to be given access to the server.

It is not for translation requests; please post them in this subreddit instead.


r/tibetanlanguage Jul 11 '20

Tibetan language learning resources

81 Upvotes

 

Dictionaries
 

1. https://dictionary.christian-steinert.de/#home. Online dictionary aggregator. Offline mobile app also available for Android.

2. For modern and secular terms: Melvyn Goldstein's Tibetan-English Dictionary of Modern Tibetan.

 

Spoken Lhasa & exile dialect
 

Nicolas Tournadre & Sangda Dorje's Manual of Standard Tibetan. Highly recommended.

Franziska Oertle's Heart of Tibetan Language.

Ruth Gamble & Tenzin Ringpapontsang's Introduction to the Tibetan Language. Free e-book from Australian National University.

 

Amdo language
 

Kuo-ming Sung & Lha Byams Rgyal's Colloquial Amdo Tibetan: A Complete Course for Adult English Speakers

Palden Tashi's Introduction to Normative Oral Amdo

 

Classical and written Tibetan

 

John Rockwell's A Primer for Classical Literary Tibetan

Joe Wilson's Translating Buddhism from Tibetan

Joanna Bialek's A Textbook in Classical Tibetan

Stephen Hodge's An Introduction to Classical Tibetan

 

Readers
 

Craig Preston's How to Read Classical Tibetan starting with the alphabet

 

Online resources

 

Regular classes in spoken or Classical Tibetan:

 

https://ryi.org online and in-person classes

https://www.lrztp.org in-person classes

https://www.tibetanlanguage.org/ online classes

https://www.sinibridge.org online classes

 

Tibetan Language Discord Servers

https://discord.gg/nGbgGk5KcB
 

Other

Accent database.

Accents from 146 different Tibetan districts (རྫོང). Very helpful resource if you want to learn or break down a specific accent.


r/tibetanlanguage 3d ago

Help reading a handwritten inscription found in a used copy of a Chögyam Trungpa book

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29 Upvotes

I picked up a used copy of Great Eastern Sun by Chögyam Trungpa, and the inside cover has a short inscription handwritten in gold/metallic ink.

I’d love to know what it says, even just roughly. Photo attached. Thanks in advance!


r/tibetanlanguage 6d ago

What is oya meh in this video, and what is she saying in tibetan (a video becoming viral among tibetans)

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14 Upvotes

The video is getting viral among Tibetans in Tibet and many Tibetans are imitating lol. Seems to be a tibetan vlogger selling her goods on Chinese Tiktok.

As a Chinese I'm only sure about the chinese part used by here.

Dao qian: apologize.

Fan keyi luan chi, hua ke buneng luan jiang: you can eat whatever but never just say whatever words.

Wo meiyou zuo cuo renhe ren de: sorta like "I never owe an apology to anyone"

Di hui wode chanping: spread rumors and defame my products.


r/tibetanlanguage 8d ago

Listening to colloquial Tibetan

15 Upvotes

I am a tiny bit acquainted with classical Tibetan, and might want to study colloquial Tibetan someday. I wanted to have something playing in the background to become familiar with the sounds of spoken Tibetan. Does anyone do this, and do you have any recommendations for videos/songs/prayers/channels? Preferably free online. :)


r/tibetanlanguage 9d ago

Can someone pls translate it for me!!

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34 Upvotes

Its horroscope of a frnd if mine
So can someone pls translate a bit about it


r/tibetanlanguage 13d ago

Can anyone translate this? Found on a remote beach in Alaska.

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164 Upvotes

r/tibetanlanguage 14d ago

Colloquial Tibetan Course for Absolute Beginners - Aug. 1-Sept. 5

21 Upvotes

Sarnanth International Nyingma Institute (SINI) is beginning its Beginner course in Aug. Check the link.

https://www.heartoftibetanlanguage.com/live/learning-to-read?mc_cid=51b6be651e&mc_eid=63b11995f3


r/tibetanlanguage 16d ago

Tibetan chop seals (signature stamps)

3 Upvotes

Tashi delek,

I found some pictures of examples of Tibetan chops (engraved stamps that can function in lieu of a signature -- usually associated with East Asia). I had some questions about how they work in the Tibetan context.

How are Tibetan chops designed? I imagine it would be hard to compress a full name in Tibetan script into a chop design, so I assume some modification or shortening might happen? Maybe using Phags-pa? I am more familiar with their use in the Sinosphere, where characters are easily arranged into a chop design.


r/tibetanlanguage 17d ago

Requesting translation of 2 Tibetan phrases

6 Upvotes

I'd really appreciate it if a native speaker or someone fluent could check the spelling, letter-stacking, and grammar of these two phrases:
Phrase 1 (top line): འགྲོ་བ་སེམས་ཅན
Intended meaning: "wandering sentient/conscious being"
Pronunciation I have: drowa semchen
Phrase 2 (bottom line): མི་ལུས་རིན་ཆེན
Intended meaning: "precious human body"
Pronunciation I have: mi lü rinchen

Thank you!


r/tibetanlanguage 20d ago

Where can I get Limbu language material in Roman Script?

4 Upvotes

I want to compare the limbu languages to the language of minorities of yunnan and northern burma. So I need your help in decoding the mystery of limbu migration from these regions. I want to see which tribes of yunnan, burma are most related to limbu. Please help me.

Note. The Limbus are not Tibetians. They were a multi ethnic refugees from Northern Burma/Yunnan regions. However, in Sikkim, they had a lot of Tibetian Bhutia influence.


r/tibetanlanguage 24d ago

Language exchange (sort of), TIB (Lhasa Dialect) - EN or TIB- FR

5 Upvotes

I'm looking for somebody who would be willing to record himself/herself reading Tibetan sentences I've written (and possibly check on them in case I've made mistakes). This person should speak the Central dialect, and have this accent (I'm just not familiar with the other two). In exchange I'm happy to help with English (C1 level) or French (native) :) it's for my own personal use, to practice pronunciation. DM me if you're interested!


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 22 '26

Hello to everyone. My friend found these at what used to be a lake after it was drained (USA) . Someone suggested that the language might be Bhoti, so I'm posting it here, because if true we'd appreciate a lot of anyone can translate the text for us. Gigantic thanks in advance.

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88 Upvotes

Also if someone knows the purpose of such, would be awesome to learn about it too.


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 22 '26

Why is འཆི་མེད written as Chemi in English when it is both written and pronounced Chime?

3 Upvotes

r/tibetanlanguage Jun 20 '26

[Tibetan > English] Found this print while out thrifting, need help translating it.

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8 Upvotes

r/tibetanlanguage Jun 18 '26

Please help us translate Tibetan requests on Reddit!

17 Upvotes

བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས།!

We're mods over at r/translator. We always strive to make our multilingual community the universal place on Reddit to go for a translation, no matter what language people may be looking for. We are however somewhat lacking in Tibetan coverage, and were hoping some wonderful multilingual people here could help us out.

Would anyone be interested in helping translate any future requests for Tibetan on r/translator? You don't even need to subscribe to our subreddit! We usually get a request for it occasionally and most requests that come in are pretty simple and casual and don't need advanced knowledge. (A lot of them are om mani padme hum, but there are requests that aren't for that mantra~!)

You can easily unsubscribe from those messages at any time.


We have a notifications system that only sends you a message when a request for Tibetan comes in. Just send a message to our subreddit bot at the link below.

Language Notification signup Estimated request frequency
Tibetan ➡️ Get Tibetan translation notifications 6.19 posts/month

ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཆེ་།!


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 19 '26

The comprehensibility of the Ri skad (Rike) language for Tibetans and Bhutanese

4 Upvotes

I have a question for Tibetans and Bhutanese. I am building a fictional language inspired by Tibetan and Dzongkha and I want to see if this text is understandable to you.

Brahui-i ke či-la ke-šo dravidi in de la ji žin ge ra-i gi brahui pa ne pa lu pakisitan-gi balučisitan, mi de pa tor wa lu iran,aphghanisitan ing turkmenisitan, ing gi-i yeng mi de pa brahui lu ghatar,arabia emiret ing iragh sipits gyur.


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 16 '26

Translation Help Needed for This Song.

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7 Upvotes

Hi guys,

I’m not originally from this community, but came here for help.

In the attached video, you can hear a kid singing and then accompanied by a male voice with Erhu from 0:00-5:08. Could anyone translating what they are singing? I’ve tried looking for lyrics to no results.

If anyone could assist me translating, I will deeply appreciate it. Thanks!


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 12 '26

Building machine translation for Limbu — need a native reader to check the output (paid)

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1 Upvotes

r/tibetanlanguage Jun 05 '26

I'm learning Tibetan in Anki.

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32 Upvotes

Hi all! I started studying Anki every day. It's been a huge success. Now I can understand books and textbooks. I also understand them well by ear and can watch content. I want to do this every day for many years. Share how you're learning with Anki. I'm open to sharing Anki decks. I'm interested in decks that aren't on the Anki website and that aren't for distribution.


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 05 '26

Amazing Tibetan teacher/ learning resources

23 Upvotes

Hello I am a student of tibeten language now for 10 months and my teacher norbue who I started around late October early november last year, has me now both reading and writing in tibeten as well as understanding basic phrases ect. I'm ao amazed at the rapid learning iv had since being class with him.

So i rhought id share as it took me a while to find my groove. He has a YouTube channel and websight with so many free resources that anyone here learning tibeten could benefit from. I personally started off w a course of his that's no longer available, but he has just launched a new upgraded full course that i just purchased ( i havnt completed it yet but its so far again amazing) all his learning materials are honestly amazing and quite optimistic haha which helps when studying a new language. for anyone looking for an amazing teacher or just more free tibeten language learning materials both free and for a small fee he is unreal.

https://tibetanwithnorbu.info/


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 03 '26

A TEACHING ON TAKING NOTES IN TEACHINGS

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3 Upvotes

This short clip is Drupon Rinpoche offering advice for how to listen to Dharma teachings. It was posted on Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre’s Facebook page. It seems this teaching was just given yesterday. I appreciated his insights as I watched it, and thought like-minded people in this Subreddit would too.

Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BLeFaUbki/?mibextid=wwXIfr

https://archive.org/details/aqnoeui-8vu-ril-ic-9g-dw-uxo-gkbz-wkg-av-rg-v-1c-k-1b-x-l-m-9-bu-9-sj-8-iwaa-5-n


r/tibetanlanguage Jun 01 '26

Struggles with language learning/Stories?

14 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I am struggling a lot with Tibetan due to limited resources and money, plus how complex and unique it is in relation to being a native speaker of English! I wanted some motivation but also to not feel alone in this so wanted to ask people if they could share their stories of when they first started learning Tibetan and how they felt/what they did, just to make me feel a little better!

Any little story or anecdote is appreciated 😄


r/tibetanlanguage May 31 '26

Please help with translating the colophon

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13 Upvotes

Please help with translating the colophon from a Astasahasrika Prajñaparamita manuscript. Can anyone help identify? I have been trying to learn as much as I can about this through internet and AI, but it’s hard.


r/tibetanlanguage May 28 '26

I need some help with the translation

6 Upvotes

Hi, as a part of my B.A thesis I have to translate some texts written in Tibetan. It was, however, written in Lahul in 1930s, so there are certain words distinctive to this region's dialect and time frame that even my native Tibetan teacher couldn't help me with.
If there's someone here from Lahul, Spiti, Kullu, or this general area, who may be able to help me, I'd really appreciate your help. I obviously don't need anyone to translate entire paragraphs for me, I mostly need some help with few sentences.