The Tibetan alphabet consists of 30 consonants and four vowels. The consonants are traditionally arranged in a set of four columns and eight rows.
Each consonant has an inherent "a" sound. There are four other vowels in Tibetan, (listed in order of appearance) gi gu, shabs kyu, deng pu, na ro. The vowels are not letters by themselves, but are drawn either above or below the consonant they modify. In the film, the last consonant of the alphabet is used as an example.
Listen carefully to each letter as it is pronounced by the native speaker in the film. Though it may be your habit to aspirate each letter (as is quite common in English), in Tibetan only certain letters have aspiration (breath). This may be difficult at first to both hear and pronounce but is absolutely necessary in order to speak the language correctly.
To a native speaker, "Ka", "Kha","Ga" are very distinguishable. Therefore, if one does not perfect one's ability in hearing and pronouncing these sounds correctly, confusion will most certainly arise when one attempts to communicate with a native speaker.Typically the second letter of each row is aspirated. Hearing the difference may be difficult in the case of aspiration so it is important to train your ears. In the case of the other non-aspirated letters, pronouncing may be difficult at first. Therefore, one should practice saying these letters without pushing the breath behind them.
After listening to the native speaker pronounce the letter, immediately, without any hesitation or thought, repeat out loud the letter you just heard in your best attempt to imitate the speech pattern of the narrator.
Though Tibetan is not as tonal as some far eastern languages, such as Chinese, there nevertheless is an inherent emphasis or underemphasis in the pronunciation of certain letters.
If the subtle tonality and aspiration/non-aspiration of each letter is practiced to the point of habit, one can be sure they are well on their way to properly speaking the language and will most certainly have a very solid foundation to build on when advancing towards fluent speech.
Though, in my opinion it is better to rely on your ears and develop a natural ability to both distinguish the sounds from hearing them and to imitate them when speaking, I have ,nevertheless, provided a photo for reference so that one can see the transliteration of the pronunciation in Roman script. It is at your discretion whether you choose to rely on associating the Tibetan script to a script you are more familiar with or whether you choose to become familiar with the Tibetan script as it is. I personally recommend relying as little as possible on these transliterations, as your goal is to learn and understand the Tibetan language. The fact is, Tibetan has little to nothing in common with the English language. It is neither similar phonetically nor grammatically to the way the English language is structured and spoken. That being said, this is truly just my opinion. It is quite common in the majority of Tibetan language books to include these transliterations and it would not be fair to impose my views on how to approach learning the language, particularly since the goal of these resources I am creating is to allow the user to define what approach works best for them. Below is the Tibetan alphabet with the phonetics in Roman script to the right of each letter.
