Tables of Reference to Tibetan Dictionaries

Extract

THE great difficulty of the Tibetan language is the spelling. This may appear strange in a monosyllabic language, but is due to there being five Prefixes (sngön-jug), ga, da, ba, ma, ha, and four Head-Letters (Go Yig), ra, la, sa, which also precede the principal letter, and one subscribed letter, wa, which follows it, which are none of them sounded; and also that certain combinations of letters are pronounced differently to their spelling, namely the principal letters pa and ba followed by ya are pronounced as cha; most of the principal letters when followed by raare pronounced as ṭa or ḍa; and za followed by la is pronounced as ḍa.