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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, January 23, 2004, 13:31
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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Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>