Wikipedia key to pronunciation of Tibetan
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Standard Tibetan pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters .
IPA Tibetan
English approximation
Consonants
b བ
b og ([p] on a low tone)
c ཀྱ
sk ew
cʰ ཁྱ གྱ
c ute
ɕ ཞ ཤ
sh eep
d ད
d og ([t] on a low tone)
ɖ ~ ɖʐ གྲ
dr aw ([ʈ] ~[ʈʂ] on a low tone)
dz ཛ
adz ([ts] on a low tone)
dʑ ཇ
j eep ([tɕ] on a low tone)
ɡ ག
g one ([k] on a low tone)
h ཧ
h ead
j ཡ
y es
ɟ གྱ
arg ue ([c] on a low tone)
k ཀ
sc at
kʰ ཁ ག
c at
l ལ
l eap
l̥ ལྷ
(voiceless l , like hl )
m མ
m oon
n ན
n oon
ɲ ཉ
cany on
ŋ ང
song
p པ
sp in
pʰ ཕ བ
p in
ɹ ར
the r in drink
ɹ̥ རྷ
(voiceless r , like hr )
s ཟ ས
s ong
ʂ ཧྲ
like first part of shrew [ʂɹu]
t ཏ
st op
tʰ ད ཐ
t op
ʈ ʈʂ ཀྲ
str eam
ʈʰ ʈʂʰ ཁྲ གྲ
tr ack
tɕ ཅ
beach
tɕʰ ཇ ཆ
ch eer
ts ཙ
cats
tsʰ ཛ ཚ
ts unami
w ཝ
w ater
z ཟ
z oo ([s] on a low tone)
ʑ ཞ
g enre ([ɕ] on a low tone)
ʔ ཨ
oh-oh!
ʎ ལྱ
Spanish castill a
ɥ ཝཡ
French hu it (Between y et and w et)
ç ཧྱ
similarly h uge
IPA
Tibetan
English approximation
Vowels
a ཨ
between fa t and fa ther
e ཨེ
Spanish e (in Sp. open syllables)
ɛ ཨ
be d
i ཨི
see
ɪ ཨི
si t but more centralised
o ཨོ
Spanish o (in Sp. open syllables)
ø ཨོ
French eu , German ö
ɔ ཨོ
o ff
œ ཨོ
Danish ø
u ཨུ
moo n
ʊ ཨུ
goo d but more centralised
y ཨུ
French u, German ü
ʏ ཨུ
Dutch u
◌̃
nasal vowel
Tones
IPA
Description
sí high level: si˥
sî high falling: si˥˧
sǐ low rising: si˩˧
sì low level: si˩
Comparisons Introductory guides
