Script and Orthography
Tibetan is written in an alphabet derived from the 7th century CE Gupta script of India, itself derived from Brāhmī, the ancestor of all Indian and many Southeast Asian and Central Asian scripts. A consonant sign without any added vowel has an inherent vowel a; to represent other vowels, vowel signs are added above or below consonant signs.
If there is a consonant cluster, one consonant is taken as the root initial. Consonants which precede it are written above or before it; consonants which follow are written beneath it. Syllable and phrase boundaries are marked but there is no marking of word boundaries.
The arrangement of the alphabet reflects that of its Indian model and the sound system of Classical Tibetan (its 30 consonants have a one-to-one correspondence with the 30 basic sounds).
It is shown below with the Wylie transliteration system underneath, and its phonetic equivalent in the International Phonetic Alphabet between square brackets (the inherent a is not represented).
If there is a consonant cluster, one consonant is taken as the root initial. Consonants which precede it are written above or before it; consonants which follow are written beneath it. Syllable and phrase boundaries are marked but there is no marking of word boundaries.
The arrangement of the alphabet reflects that of its Indian model and the sound system of Classical Tibetan (its 30 consonants have a one-to-one correspondence with the 30 basic sounds).
It is shown below with the Wylie transliteration system underneath, and its phonetic equivalent in the International Phonetic Alphabet between square brackets (the inherent a is not represented).
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