Tibetan Alphabet - History

History

The creation of the Tibetan alphabet is attributed to Thonmi Sambhota of the mid-7th century. Tradition holds that Thonmi Sambhota, a minister of Songtsen Gampo (569-649), was sent to India to study the art of writing, and upon his return introduced the alphabet. The form of the letters is based on an Indic alphabet of that period.

Three orthographic standardizations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures, emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa, there is a great divergence between spelling (which reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan) and pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform, to write Tibetan "as it is pronounced", for example, writing "Kagyu" instead of "Bka'-rgyud". In contrast, the pronunciation of the Balti, Ladakhi and Burig languages adheres more closely to the archaic spelling.