Tibetan Software Tool Successfully Developed

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Tibetan Software Tool Successfully Developed

The Northwest College of Nationalities has successfully developed a Tibetan software tool and a software universally used for Tibetan, Chinese and English languages and these, as authenticated by experts from departments concerned, have been claimed to be the first of their kind, at world top level.

There was already developed a prototype of Tibetan software used in China. But it was just a processing tool for publishing, used for no more than inputting and editing Tibetan books and newspapers. This has raised the demand for new Tibetan software tool and software along with other ethnic language software tools to be developed and widely used to a multiple specific purpose. This is especially so for school language teaching as of Tibetan, Chinese and English for a countrywide Internet project going in for long-distance education is going to be launched in Tibetan-speaking and other ethnic minority areas in China.

The Tibetan Language

History

The written language of Tibet was primarily developed by a Tibetan scholar named Tonmi Sambhota, who was sent to India, with some students, by the great Tibetan "religious king" King Tsongtsen Gampo (c. 618-650 AD).

Tonmi Sambhota and his students travelled to Kashmir, where they remained for a number of years. They adapted a northern Indian form of the Gupta script to the sounds of the oral Tibetan language, and modified Sanskrit grammatical rules to fit oral Tibetan.

When Tonmi Sambhota and his retinue returned to Tibet, King Tsongtsen Gampo declared Sambhota's script to be the standard for written Tibetan.

Description of the Tibetan Language

Learning Tibetan is not hard if you do a little every day (at least 30 minutes, although I try to do at least 1 hour). Unless you wish to speak proficiently, you don't even need a teacher.

Like English, Tibetan uses a phonetic alphabet ( 30 consonants plus 4 vowels). These consonants can be combined by superscribing or subscribing other consonants to create a limitless set of different syllables. Often, consonants sound similar (if not the same), but have different meanings. Context is very important to distinguish the meanings of such syllables. In detail

By PD Online staff member Huang Ying

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