🔠Alphabet (syllabary)
Sounds
To learn the sounds of the alphabet or syllabary and how to combine them into syllable clusters, visit the Letters and Sounds Playlist page.
Tone and Aspiration Handout (Breathiness)
Listen to a native speaker pronouncing the thirty root consonants here: https://uma-tibet.org/the-tibetan-consonants-and-their-sounds/
Root Letters and Accessories
You are already familiar with the root letters and how they are organized into families with the Tone and Aspiration Handout. The following rows give the root letters, the vowels, superfixed letters, subfixed letters, super-and-sub-fixed letters, the prefixes, suffixes, and postfixes.
༄༅། ཀ་ཁ་ག་ང་། ཅ་ཆ་ཇ་ཉ། ཏ་ཐ་ད་ན། པ་ཕ་བ་མ།
ཙ་ཚ་ཛ་ཝ། ཞ་ཟ་འ་ཡ། ར་ལ་ཤ་ས། ཧ་ཨ།
ཨི་ ཨུ་ ཨེ་ ཨོ།
རྐ་ རྒ་ རྔ་ རྗ་ རྙ་ རྟ་ རྣ་ རྦ་ རྨ་ རྩ་ རྫ།
ལྐ་ ལྒ་ ལྔ་ ལྕ་ ལྗ་ ལྟ་ ལྡ་ ལྤ་ ལྦ་ ལྷ།
སྐ་ སྒ་ སྔ་ སྙ་ སྟ་ སྡ་ སྣ་ སྤ་ སྦ་ སྨ་ སྩ་
ཀྱ་ ཁྱ་ གྱ་ པྱ་ ཕྱ་ བྱ་ མྱ་
ཀྲ་ ཁྲ་ གྲ་ ཏྲ་ ཐྲ་ དྲ་ ནྲ་ པྲ་ ཕྲ་ བྲ་ མྲ་ ཤྲ་ སྲ་ ཧྲ།
ཀླ་ གླ་ བླ་ རླ་ སླ་ ཟླ་
ཀྭ་ ཁྭ་ གྭ་ ཅྭ་ ཉྭ་ ཏྭ་ དྭ་ ཙྭ་ ཚྭ་ ཞྭ་ ཟྭ་ རྭ་ ལྭ་ ཤྭ་ སྭ་ ཧྭ་
རྐྱ་ རྒྱ་ རྨྱ།
སྐྱ་ སྒྱ་ སྤྱ་ སྦྱ་ སྨྱ།
སྐྲ་ སྒྲ་ སྣྲ་ སྤྲ་ སྦྲ་ སྨྲ།
རྩྭ་ ཕྱྭ་ གྲྭ་ དྲྭ།
ག་ ད་ བ་ མ་ འ།
ག་ ང་ ད་ ན་ བ་ མ་ འ་ ར་ ལ་ ས།
ད་ ས།
Worksheets
Root letters
✍️Learn the stroke order for the 30 root letters here: 30 syllable markers "alphabet"
✍️Blank handwriting practice sheet for practicing writing out the root letters by hand
You might like to buy a book like the Tibetan Calligraphy Copybook and some tracing paper to get familiar with the tsuring and chukyik styles also.
Combined letters
✍️Handwriting practice sheet for conjunct consonants
📃🎧Review sheet for roots and combinations: 30 root letters and conjunct consonants and listening practice at the Audio file
Practice Game
Thanks to my student, Anaïs, for finding this one. It's a test-yourself alphabet game for the thirty root letters. GaKha (bum-pa-mi-rtag-pa.site.
Esukhia has also produced an excellent interactive beginning reader that is a bit like a game. You listen, speak, read, and write your way through the alphabet and progress quickly to simple words and fairly clear visual cues about vocabulary, even if you aren't working with a teacher online or in person yet. https://esukhia.online/textbooks/ (Start with the How to Use this Book page for the Beginning Reader). See the Course Websites page for more ideas on how to use the immersion-style Tibetan materials from Esukhia for further learning.
Reading Practice Channel
Do a search in the "video" tab using "oldest" sorting for comprehensive alphabet and spelling practice videos: LEARNING: Basic Reading Tibetan Language - YouTube
How to read cursive
Reading ume script https://youtu.be/-5b22Sg1K8w?si=HHe5mQBWMAZTWdx6
Reading gyuk yik cursive script https://www.omniglot.com/writing/tibetan.htm and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLJpOCOnsvI v
Root Letters
The images below show the thirty root letters in four different styles:
u-chan, the most common version for printing,
u-med, taught to young children in central Tibet, but not so popular everywhere else,
u-med short forms and gyuk-yik are more typical styles for quick, cursive-style writing.
I find it less visually distracting, when learning, to see the individual characters without the ཚེག་ or "dot"-like syllable-end marker:
