Tibetan

Ti·bet·an

T0202900 (tĭ-bĕt′n)adj. Of or relating to Tibet, the Tibetans, or their language or culture.n.1. a. A native or inhabitant of Tibet.b. A member of a traditionally Buddhist people constituting the predominant ethnic population of Tibet and neighboring regions in China, Bhutan, and Nepal, with large displaced populations in India.2. The Tibeto-Burman language of the Tibetans.

Tibetan

(tɪˈbɛtən) adj (Languages) of, relating to, or characteristic of Tibet, its people, or their languagen1. (Peoples) a native or inhabitant of Tibet2. (Languages) the language of Tibet, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan family

Ti•bet•an

(tɪˈbɛt n)
n. 1. a native or inhabitant of Tibet. 2. a Tibeto-Burman language comprising a broad range of dialects spoken in Tibet and adjacent parts of S and E Asia. 3. a member of any Tibetan-speaking ethnic group. adj. 4. of or pertaining to Tibet, its inhabitants, or Tibetan. [1740–50]

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	Tibetan - Himalayish language spoken in TibetHimalayish - the Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan and Sikkim
	2.	Tibetan - a native or inhabitant of TibetAsian, Asiatic - a native or inhabitant of Asia
Adj.	1.	Tibetan - of or relating to or characteristic of Tibet or its people or their language; "Tibetan monks"

Translations

藏语西藏人西藏的

Tibetan

→ 藏语zhCN, 西藏人zhCN, 西藏的zhCN

Tibetan

the language of the Tibetans; spoken in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and certain other areas of the People’s Republic of China, as well as in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The number of Tibetan-speaking people is approximately 4.5 million (1974, estimate). The language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.

Tibetan dialects differ mainly in their phonetics, for example, the presence or absence of a system of tones. They are classified as archaic, such as A-mdo and the Dege dialect, and nonarchaic, for example, the dialect of Lhasa (the basis of the standard language) and that of Shigatse. The phonological system includes 16 vowel phonemes, distinguished by three tone levels and three degrees of labialization, and 36 consonant phonemes. The tones are phonemically distinctive. Tibetan is an isolating language with an agglutinative, inflectional morphology. It is polysyllabic, with a correspondence between syllables and morphemes. Nouns and pronouns have the category of number, and verbs have person, mood, aspect, and tense. Word formation is by agglutinative affixation, compounding, and reduplication. A peculiarity of the Tibetan language is its use of honorifics in vocabulary and grammar. The first written texts date from the seventh through tenth centuries. The alphabet is based on the Indian Devanagari script.

REFERENCES

Rerikh, Iu. N. Tibetskii iazyk. Moscow, 1961.
Parfionovich, Iu. M. Tibetskii pis’mennyi iazyk. Moscow, 1970.
Kratkii tibetsko-russkii slovar ’. Moscow, 1963.
Richter, E. Grundlagen der Phonetik der Lhasa Dialektes. Berlin, 1964.
Sedláček, K. Tibetan Newspaper Reader, vols. 1–2. Leipzig, 1972.
Buck, S. H. Tibetan-English Dictionary With Supplement. Washington, D.C., 1969.

I. M. KOMAROVA

Tibetan

Ti·bet·an

Tibetan

Ti•bet•an

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Tibetan

REFERENCES

Tibetan

Words related to Tibetan

noun Himalayish language spoken in Tibet

Related Words

noun a native or inhabitant of Tibet

Related Words