If your goal is mainly travel and everyday conversation, I would prioritize 1 through 6.

If you want a "fast-track" to interpreting for a Buddhist teacher, I would recommend 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 9.  

If you have an interest in Science and Technology, add 10. 

I have also pinned the links to some of these books at a Pinterest board: pinterest.ca/howtolearntibetan. 

1. Colloquial Tibetan Grammar Book , Vols. 1, 2 and 3 (paperback) this is a precious resource by a teacher, Dawa Tsering, who has decades of experience teaching colloquial Tibetan as a foreign language. He has helpful explanations and tips and a well-organized approach to building toward sentence structure complexity.  https://vajrabookshop.com/product/colloquial-tibetan-grammar-book-volume-1-and-2/ I am reading through these now (in March 2025) and making myself some audio practice files. It is full of sample sentences and clear explanations for them. No companion audio that I am aware of. Volume 3 is also available online now at https://vajrabookshop.com/product/colloquial-tibetan-grammar-book-literay-tibetan-grammar-seven-cases-idioms-volume-3/ 

2. Speak Fluent Tibetan (eBook, paperback)  This is a well-organized book based on 148 key sentence models with vocabulary-building modules, appendices, verb tables, and a glossary. This will allow you to build fluency for A1/A2 once you are able to read the Tibetan script. It apparently also has an audio cd available, but I haven't been able to find a source for it. If you are in Dharamshala you can visit LTWA and see if you can find the audio and paperback version.
   Ebook: https://books.google.ca/books?id=6m72DwAAQBAJ  

3. Colloquial Tibetan (eBook, paperback, audio) very helpful for learning conversational Tibetan, levels A1, A2, B1 and B2, with audio and pronunciation guide. The audio dialogues are very typical of natural conversations in everyday life, with a variety of voices and good voice acting.

   • Book: https://www.amazon.ca/Colloquial-Tibetan-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/113895019X A second book is planned, so please do support them by buying the first one.

   • Audio (free): Colloquial Language Series Website - Colloquial Tibetan (routledgetextbooks.com)  

   • Vocabulary notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rX7BUJyrcGxjimj0GCNFMAA1yhUv0KNA/view?usp=sharing - you can add comments to these notes if you see room for improvement or corrections. I have kept སོང་ as "happening" instead of "happened", but I may change my mind on that later.

4. Nominal Honorific Compounds in Tibetan (article)  This article contains a helpful table of humilifics versus honorifics. No dialogues here, but it will give you important insights into how to modify vocabulary according to the speaker and the person addressed, and how to recognize honorific markers by category.
   Article in pdf: http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/lyovin1992nominal.pdf 

5. Textbook of Modern Colloquial Tibetan Conversation (paperback, audio)  This little green book is a classic for A2 and a bit of A3, with many useful dialogues having a lot of honorifics, as spoken in Lhasa. 

   • Book: Textbook of Modern Colloquial Tibetan: A Conversations (Audio Instructional Series I): Tashi: 9788185102573: Books - Amazon.ca

   • Audio: Audio 

6. Speak Tibetan the Tibetan Way  (eBook, paperback, exercise book)  These A2-B1 dialogues are clearly influenced by the Esukhia school's dialogues, and you will notice some crossover topics and material. Plus it has a handy glossary for each dialogue. I have started reading it aloud and recording myself reading it, and I'm finding it a helpful exercise in increasing my reading speed and slowly learning native-fluent syntax.

   • Ebook:https://books.google.ca/books/about/Speak_Tibetan_the_Tibetan_Way_Textbook.html?id=tyL3DwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y   

   • Book: https://www.bibliaimpex.com/index.php?p=sr&format=fullpage&Field=bookcode&String=9789380359861 this book in paperback is a bit of a challenge to find, but if you can get your hands on one it is very helpful. Might take some poking around on Google to find a current supplier.

   • It seems they have now (September 2024) added an exercise book companion also: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=vSL3DwAAQBAJ 

7. Advanced Fluent Tibetan (pdf eBook, audio) colloquial B1 Dialogues by Thupten Jinpa, and the tenth lesson introduces dharma vocabulary.

   • Book in pdf: http://haa.dila.edu.tw/Advanced_Tibetan_Dialogues.pdf 

   • Audio: https://sciarium.com/file/256747/

   • Bilingual audio: Advanced Fluent Tibetan Files I inserted English audio into the files available above to make this bilingual version.

   • Vocabulary notes for Lesson 1:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rGxn1KaA_KSBm-i13of_hJqIXGYtIz7w/view?usp=sharing 

8. Tibetan Correspondence Course  (pdf ebook, audio) Harding and Morelli. This has some introductory A1 and A2 colloquial dialogues also, but it mainly has B1 and B2 dharma dialogues that are somewhat easier to start with than those in the Geshe Sopa book.  

   • Book in pdf: https://learntibetian.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/tibetan-language-correspondence-course-sara-harding-jeremy-morrelli.pdf

   • Audio: I do have audio for these, but the sound quality is poor. I will see about making a new version to post sometime.

9. Lectures on Tibetan Religious Culture (eBook, paperback, audio) Written by Geshe Lhundrup Sopa. B2 and C1 Dialogues with monks about (Geluk) monastic life and dharma topics. If your goal is to translate for Buddhist monks, this is the go-to textbook at a lot of translator-training programs.
   Ebook: Lectures on Tibetan Religious Culture by Geshe Lhundup Sopa - Books on Google Play
   Audio: the online link seems to be down, but contact me if you need a source.

10. Philosophy of Science  (pdf ebook) from the Emory Tibet Science Initiative (no audio, but there are other books also on Math, Physics, Biology and Neuroscience, and accompanying videos throughout the site. There is also another primer on Dharma of Science. https://www.emorytibetscienceinitiative.com/primer-reading/philosophy-of-science 

➡️ Further Options 

These will supplement your learning and may be more appropriate places to start for some learning styles. 

11. Introduction to the Tibetan Language - Australian National University - Walks you through from basic spelling to more complex sentences. Will be useful for those with a background in Linguistics and those used to learning language from a grammar book. Another good place to start for such beginners.
    Ebook: https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/textbooks/introduction-tibetan-language 

12. A Beginning Textbook of Lhasa Tibetan - helps you get started with reading and writing, simple dialogues
    Book in pdf: Tibetan, a Beginning Textbook of Lhasa - DocsLib
    Audio: Audio download 

13. The Heart of Tibetan Language - This book helps to clarify many Tibetan constructions and particularities that are not intuitively obvious to speakers of Indo-European languages. Note that each audio file is linked in the book pages by a QR code. The codes are unnumbered, so it may take a bit of work to figure out which file goes with which page if you aren’t using the QR codes directly to open the files. I will publish a table here if I make one.
    Ebook: https://books.google.ca/books?id=NW32DwAAQBAJ
    Audio and flashcards: http://franziska.in/#portfoliop

14. Tibetan Language Textbook Online (in Russian, use a Google Translate browser extension if needed) -  https://tibetan.spb.ru/

15. Useful Tibetan-English Phrases Threshold - a very practical series of lessons framed in a dictionary/phrasebook style with English pronunciation provided
    Book in pdf: https://learntibetian.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/useful-tibetan-english-phrases-treshold.pdf 

16. Manual of Standard Tibetan - this is a popular course text with Lhasa-centered dialogues and short folk tales and cultural stories about Tibet
    Scanned book: https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Books/Linguistics/Mega%20linguistics%20pack/Sino-Tibetan/
    Audio: https://www.shambhala.com/manualofstandardtibetan/ 

17. Handbook of Colloquial Tibetan - this is a book from 1897 with only phonetics, but I am intrigued by it. It seems to have some useful dialogues and cultural notes. Will definitely be giving it a look. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.31488/page/n1/mode/2up

• 108 Translations - Latse https://www.latse.org/108-translations/ eBook Tibetan translations of western books including the Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, Pride and Prejudice, and Night.

• https://tibetanebook.com/ 

• This chain bookstore is where I found some good grammar books and short readings in Lhasa, as well as the Diary of Anne Frank in Tibetan: 济南新华书店 (xhsd.cn) 

• This bookstore and publisher in Nepal has the Colloquial Tibetan Grammar book volumes 1, 2 and 3: https://vajrabookshop.com/ 

Online libraries or book sources

• HHDL XIV English books at https://oceanofpdf.com/category/authors/dalai-lama-xiv/ 

• Storybooks Himalaya with audio included https://global-asp.github.io/storybooks-himalaya/stories/bo/ 

• BuddhaNet has some children's ebooks about the life of the Buddha in English, here: https://www.buddhanet.net/ebooks_childrens/

Some of these links are duplicated under the "Dictionaries and translation tools" section.

• 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha

• Buddhist sutra collection https://archive.org/details/buddhist-sutra-collection-rs/mode/2up

• Classical Tibetan Wiki: https://wiki.learntibetanlanguage.org/ 

• Dedication prayers vocabulary notes by ManjuTib

• Dharmapedia - Dictionnaire encyclopédique du bouddhisme indien et tibétain - Dharmapedia -  an excellent encyclopedia of Buddhist terms in French and Tibetan, and you can use autotranslate if you don’t speak French. This link also appears on the Reference area page in the dictionaries section.

• Glossary of Buddhist Terms — Study Buddhism – an extensive source of Buddhist teachings

• Numbered lists of Buddhist terms Lists - The Stupa

• Melodious Dharma Sound - Buddhist prayers, chanting, mantra videos playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do9tpPNUJAI&list=PLnDHR1uaQhzvXUQt2r0RC-pmvqW1qO4T8 

• Memrise Tibetan for English Speakers - if you like Duolingo- or Quizlet-style vocabulary quizzes, there seem to be a fair number of useful packs here. I haven't tested these, but might start using them sometimes.

• Refuge and the Wish to Develop Bodhicitta, with ManjuTib interlinear: notes, video

• Rigpa Shedra Wiki - an online encyclopedia of Tibetan Buddhism https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page 

• SuttaCentral Index of subjects: https://suttacentral.net/subjects?lang=en 

• Translations of Tibetan Buddhist Texts | Lotsawa House 

• Tibetan Buddhist Prayers and Conversation playlist on ManjuTib's YouTube channel

• Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Dictionary 

PDF versions of Creative Commons StoryWeaver.org books that have verified translations, or CTA books with vocabulary notes added by ManjuTib. There are also video versions at YouTube or Patreon.

A1

• Colours - video at Patreon

• Auspicious Symbols - video at Patreon

• The Race རྒྱུག་ཤར་འགྲན་སྡུར། - video at YouTube to read along in Tibetan or with vocabulary explanation

• Such a Sweet Smell! དྲི་མ་འདི་ཞིམ་པ་ལ། - video at YouTube

• The Little Red String  སྐུད་པ་དམར་པོ་ཐུང་ཐུང་།  - video with slow English and explanation for Tibetan speakers at YouTube

• Central Tibetan Administration Department of Education workbooks and textbooks. I have compiled a list of direct links with translations (in progress, and I am making companion videos as I go along) that will be useful for finding titles quickly. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A15bZVTwn-vslYzwzaav15uvmzmAaUjErt8VCjMwVnY/edit?usp=sharing 

• Central Tibetan Administration Department of Education children's books. I have compiled the list as a Google sheet that shows whether a book is written in དབུ་མེད་ or དབུ་ཅན་ or both, and how many sentences per page each book contains, so it can be filtered and sorted by difficulty level. I am also making translation notes and companion videos of these, and the various pdf and video links are provided in the table as they are completed. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UrvtkWlerAWVdgJZsIHGLQ3pbdMta20Qx1_HAIK_6kw/edit?usp=sharing 

• StoryWeaver Storybooks in Creative Commons - Plenty of Tibetan translations and some original storybooks at India's StoryWeaver, and all stories have English versions (and other language versions, too - it's quite an extensive free storybook resource).  These are my interlinear vocabulary notes on the StoryWeaver storybooks (in progress).

• • Esukhia teacher training courses https://www.arapatsa.org/

  • Esukhia's older Tibetan-only textbooks and materials  (Teachers / textbooks / A1 audio A2 B1 other / stories / games)

  • Laval University list of useful Tibetan learning sites: Outils linguistiques | Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire sur le Tibet et l’Himalaya (ulaval.ca) 

  • Learn Tibetan At Home - Tibetan teacher on facebook

  • Learn Tibetan - Russian blog website (just use a Google Translate browser extension if needed): https://learntibetian.wordpress.com/

  • Learn Tibetan Language resource list site: https://learntibetanlanguage.org/  

  • Modern Tibetan Studies Program courses at Columbia https://mtsp.weai.columbia.edu/courses 

  • Tibetan Basic Conversational Course - a video course from Heruka Institute, rather slow-moving but has some interesting context clues.
    Video playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKa_CHD3-wY3I8HJIhWStWpugNOP1U7IY 

  • Tibetan for Russians in English from Wordsmith wisdom: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeXn81KloPghxcOzOHZbEwKFHHf6Bpeft&si=faCT5y8WdpMTGdjQ 

  • Tibetan Language School - Nick Prior's site is very thorough and well organized, ideal for those interested in Linguistics. He also has lists of further resources. https://tibetanlanguage.school 

  • University of British Columbia Everyday Tibetan module is a good entry point with simple phrases for getting started: https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/66596/modules These have vocabulary lists rather than interlinear notes.

I have received three Mandarin channel recommendations from a viewer. He found these helpful for learning Tibetan as a Mandarin speaker. 

1. 藏文基礎教材
   https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT2AXPGuqkXewc0Yvy9LJhyt_HvFSHKtA 

2. 藏语拉萨口语30讲-01 | Colloquial Lhasa Tibetan in 30 Lectures - 01 仓央嘉措诗讲解《住在布达拉时》学习藏语如何问候
   https://youtu.be/KtiSmgsm4-U 

3. 学说藏语300句 拉萨话 《走近西藏》
   https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCuTdL2ar2MQE6RWN_2jq5O6GEy6h12oT 

If you’re already a Tibetan speaker and are looking to learn or improve your Tibetan reading, grammar and writing, I recommend watching Beri Prince's YouTube channel. He also offers many videos where he is teaching Tibetan-speaking children. I look forward to the day when I can follow him too...

• Camp Tibet - A North American Tibetan Community Project, summer camp for Tibetan kids in North America. You can visit the website and sponsor campers here: https://camptibet.org/

• Why learn Tibetan? This is a very good article, "How Learning Tibetan Changed the Way I Think", on what's in it for you if you do: https://www.lionsroar.com/learning-tibetan/. 

• The Tibet Museum - virtual pilgrimage visits to monasteries

• Tibetan Culture Website at Columbia University https://tibetanculture.weai.columbia.edu/ 

• Tibetan Handmade Products (ngatso.com) - good for when you need to buy gifts and want to support Tibetan artisans

• https://www.passemuraille.ca/made-in-exile/ Three short audio dramas written and performed by Tibetan artists based in Toronto.

I often use THL first because you can paste in the whole Tibetan sentence. It does a fairly good job of separating out the words, and then you can drill further down to syllables from there as needed. English word lookup is easy at both Christian Steinert and the tibterminology.net glossary, which has more modern technological terms. And the Phurba app is the most comprehensive and useful resource for contemporary Tibetan words, where I often find things that I can't get anywhere else...

1. 84,000 Glossary https://84000.co/glossary-search has Tibetan and Sanskrit. Not the easiest to navigate or find sources, but has a lot there. Would be great if it were laid out more like Dharmapedia.

2. Bing translation tool - fairly ok for translating modern Tibetan to English. For example, news articles. It’s a bit of a slog though, for now. Still fairly young. It is handy for translating the full entries from Tibetan Terminology, too.
   https://www.bing.com/translator 

3. Christian Steinert Dictionary - Tib-Eng, Eng-Tib (switch between languages using the toggle icon next to the settings wheel).  Searches can be done either in Tibetan characters or in Wylie. Better for dharma vocabulary than contemporary, but it has some modern terms.
   https://dictionary.christian-steinert.de/#home 

4. Dharma Dictionary - Rangjung Yeshe Tibetan-English Dictionary, Dharma Glossaries and Resources https://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Main_Page 

5. Dharmapedia - great if you speak French, but even if you don't, you can use a browser extension like Google Translate to give you a good approximation for this encyclopedia of Buddhist terms. 

https://www.dharmapedia.fr/ 

Ebook version

6. English-Tibetan Modern Science Dictionary from the Emory Tibet Science Initiative https://www.emorytibetscienceinitiative.com 

7. ♀️♂️ Gender-inclusive terms https://tibetanequalityproject.org/blog/gender-inclusive-tibetan-terms-for-family-and-friends 

8. Glosbe
   https://glosbe.com/bo/en 

9. Goldstein English-Tibetan Dictionary -
   https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520051577/english-tibetan-dictionary-of-modern-tibetan or https://web.archive.org/web/20220120141213/https://case.edu/affil/tibet/documents/English-TibetanDictionaryofModernTibet_001.pdf 

10. Goldstein Tibetan-English Dictionary -
    https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520204379/the-new-tibetan-english-dictionary-of-modern-tibetan 

11. Google Translate https://translate.google.ca/ Google has recently added Tibetan to their public interface. I tried a few sentences (September 2024) and it seems pretty ok. Use it with a grain of salt, as with Bing.

12. How to navigate a dictionary with Tibetan word order
    Dictionary Order | Classical Tibetan Wiki (learntibetanlanguage.org

13. IMTranslator - create interlinear translations (see the article explaining the process here)

14. Lexilogos - list of dictionaries
    https://www.lexilogos.com/english/tibetan_dictionary.htm 

15. Monlam - Artificial Intelligence - I haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but will review once I have more experience with it.
    https://monlam.ai/ 

16. Monlam Dictionary - This site is powerful, and lets you choose between Tibetan-Tibetan, Tibetan-English, English-Tibetan and Tibetan-Sanskrit.
    https://monlamdic.com/ 

17. Phurba Tibetan dictionary app - This app is very extensive and useful for Modern Tibetan in particular. I end up using THL more if I am trying to break a sentence into words or focusing on dharma words. Note that Tibetan searches must be done in Tibetan characters, not in Wylie, so you will also need to install a Tibetan keyboard. It will search for English terms if you type in English.

    1. ios: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/tibetan-dictionary/id418873951

    2. Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.phurba.tibetandictionary&hl=en_US 

    3. Desktop/laptop: if you want to be able to search in the dictionary using the full-sized keyboard on your home computer (the phone keyboard is quite small...), you can install an emulator like Bluestacks. I have tried it and it seems to work well. It speeds up my translation process...

18. Rigpa Shedra Wiki - an online encyclopedia of Tibetan Buddhism https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page 

19. Tibetan-English Visual Dictionary https://www.scribd.com/document/656559282/Tibetan-English-Visual-Dictionary 

20. THL Tib-Eng Translation Tool - The Tibetan and Himalayan Library. You can paste in whole Tibetan sentences, and it will break it into words, but it will occasionally guess wrong and you will need to do a bit of syllable investigation.
    https://www.thlib.org/reference/dictionaries/tibetan-dictionary/translate.php 

21. Tibetan Oral History Archive Project at the Library of Congress
    Glossary and Audio recordings of interviews

22. Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Dictionary

23. Tibetan Terminology - more modern and scientific terms in a glossary format
    https://tibterminology.net/ 

If you’re a Tibetan or know a Tibetan who needs to learn English, I am duplicating many of the ManjuTib dialogue videos at the sister YouTube channel, English for Tibetan Speakers. 

Tenzin Kizom has a good site for learning English at https://www.learnenglishwithkizom.com/ which also links to her YouTube channel.

 དབྱིན་ཡིག་སྦྱོང་ར། channel on YouTube has some reading practice videos for Tibetan speakers.

• PDF annotation tool at https://www.pdffiller.com/ Chat GPT recommended this site and it works beautifully for annotating with Tibetan Windows font directly onto pdfs. Finally! I expect this will increase my productivity...

• Sample fonts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=G3xC4BRuYrU 

• THL’s Online Tibetan Transliteration Converter (thlib.org) useful for transcribing mantras, with some help from the Wylie transcription guide above.

• THL’s Online Tibetan Phonetics Converter (thlib.org) useful for preparing phonetic pronunciation guides for prayers, etc.

• Tibetan Keyboard Online LEXILOGOS 

• Windows Tibetan Keyboard Layout 

• THL Wylie Transcription Guide

• This website gives tips on digital Tibetan, including OCR using Google Drive: https://digitaltibetan.github.io/DigitalTibetan/main.html