Re: Tibetan orthography (was: Why my conlangs SUCK!!!)

Quoting Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>:

> Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> writes:
> >Basically that, at best, it accurately reflects the pronunciation in
> >the speech of 7th century Yarlung, while the spoken Tibetan
> >language(s) have undergone significant phonological changes in the
> >interim.  In particular, the orthography is full of formidable
> >consonant clusters which are not pronounced in the modern language.
>
> What i don't get is why when Tibetan is written in the Latin alphabet,
> they insist on transcribing the unpronounced consonant clusters, rather
> than an orthography that *better* fits how it's pronounced (yes, i know,
> Latin orthography wouldn't be perfect, but at least you'd see what the
> spoken language looks like better if you had a closer representation (and
> i HAVE seen the latin transcription, as well as the IPA one).
'Cos it's a transliteration, not a transcription. Now, I don't disagree that a
transcription would make more sense for most non-academic purposes, like names
of persons and places in newspaper articles.

> One of my favorite things is to ask dirty-hippies into "tibetan stuff" to
> pronounce the words, and then tell them that's not what the words really
> sound like.
That's not nice! But serves 'em right!

Is there any officially sanctioned way of writing Tibetan in Latin letters,
analoguous to pinyin?

                                               Andreas

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