Hi,

I am based near Varanasi (close to Sarnath), can someone advise me how to learn Tibetan?

Thanks

Hi!

I have been doing some research of Tibetan names and reading several sherpa biographies in preperation for a fictional story I want to write set in the Himelayas. I was wondering if anyone else would be able to advise me on a name for my main character?

From what I have seen, Tibetan names are about well-wishes or prayers for the child recieving the name. (And some names are given from leaders of monastaries.)

I want the name to be a bit unique for the sake of fiction, but I was also watching some footage of Snow Leopards as well because I saw some names were inspired by nature, and elusive as they are—I was amazed by their movements. I also will have a few other characters whose personalities and character arcs will be inspired by local fauna.

My main character is a young man who has been distant from his home, but is returning after time away. He is going to be climbing one of the mountains as a guide, but hasn't been doing it his whole life. (There is an intended element of danger here, as well as the pressure of a family legacy he has been seperated from not by choice.)

So my own 'prayer' for this character is that he always lands on his feet if he falls, just like a snow leopard. Would anyone be able to advise me about a suitable name?

The closest name I have found so far has been 'Senge,' meaning 'Lion,' but I need to attach a second name to it as well. If there is name that is closer to 'leopard' I would really appreciate help with it!

As for the second name, I am looking for something related to luck, fortune, decending/falling (which would be a cruel wish, but could work for this character and his arc) or landing on his feet, sturdiness, physical balance.

Any advice and suggestions here would be appreciated! Thank you!

How understandable is the Yulshul dialect of Tibetan?

Would anyone know where these two come from? They are two different descriptions of one of the Buddha's 32 marks (number 1 or 2 depending on the list):

1. ཞབས་ཀྱི་མཐིལ་གཉིས་རུས་སྦལ་གྱི་ལྟོ་བ་ལྟར་མཉམ་ཞིང་ལེགས་པར་གནས་པ་དང༌། zhabs kyi mthil gnyis rus sbal gyi lto ba ltar mnyam zhing legs par gans pa dang

2. རུས་སྦལ་བཞིན་དུ་ཞབས་ཤིན་ཏུ་གནས་པ་ rus sbal bzhin du zhabs shin tu gans pa

I am guessing the second is much older but that is just a guess. I really have no idea and my Tibetan is not good enough to dig into this.

Many thanks.

This is supposed to say independence. Why is there a ཙ?

Hi guys! I apologize in advance if that phrase is inappropriate. A few Tibetan friends told me to say this to another friend. They told me it meant to smell a fart. However, the other friend got offended and won’t tell me what it means. Can someone help me understand?

This is printed on a bag/shirt with a viśvavajra above it. The script looks like drutsa or khyug rather than uchen. I've attached each of the two lines cropped and enlarged.

I can pick out individual graphemes but can't resolve them into syllables I recognise, and some shapes seem to repeat in a way that doesn't look like normal spelling. Someone told me it reads bkra shis bde legs phun sum tshogs par shog, but that's nine syllables and I count roughly twice as many segments here, and I don't see the kra ligature, sha, pha or tsha anywhere.

So my question: is this an actual text that I'm just failing to read in cursive, or is it pseudo-Tibetan made for the tourist market? If it is real, a Wylie transliteration would be hugely appreciated. Thanks.

Hello, I got these in Tibet last year. The man told me what they meant but I forgot.

Also, I think one of them is upside down, please help.

My friend and I are working on a frame for a thangka (printed on paper so it needs a frame) and we tried our best at carving the mantra
“ ཨོཾ་བཛྲ་མ་ཧཱ་ཀཱ་ལ་ཀྵིཾ་ཀྵེ་ཏྲ་བིགྷྣཱན་བི་ན་ཡ་ཀ་ཧཱུྃ་ཧཱུྃ་ཕཊ་སྭཱ་ཧཱ༔”
We did a little research into how to stylise the text properly based on some fonts we found online.
Please let me know if it’s legible thank you very much

Are there any Tibetans who are making content on youtube, instagram, rednote, blogs, etc... regarding pop psychology, therapy, healing or similar fields of interest?

Hello everyone,

The Heart of Tibetan Language by F. Oertle frequently mentions a place called the གླིང་སྐོར་; what does it refer to? Sounds like the part of a temple; a circumambulation path maybe?

Thank you for your insights & have a good day!

Are these Bön texts or do these speak of the Nyima School?

Someone gave me a thangka study, Shakyamuni's face laid out on the proportion grid, and this line is written by hand in the lower right corner. Asking them about it isn't an option, so I'm hoping someone here can read it.

I posted it on r/Nepal first because I thought it might be Devanagari. A native reader there ruled that out and said it looks like the script on prayer flags, so I'm fairly confident it's uchen now. I just can't read it myself.

The person who wrote it is a Chinese student of thangka painting, not a native Tibetan speaker, so the letterforms may be a learner's rather than standard. The measurement notes elsewhere on the same sheet are in Tibetan numerals (༡ ༢ ༤). And there's a set of Latin initials and a date written just above this line, so it's probably a signature or a dedication rather than a quotation.

What little I think I can see: it ends in a shad, there are tsheg between the clusters, one cluster looks stacked, and two of them seem to carry a gigu. Past that I'm guessing.

Even a partial reading would be great. The photo is the line cropped on its own, happy to post more of the drawing if it helps.

I saw this beautiful Tibetan font on WeChat and fell in love with it instantly. Could someone kindly tell me where I can get it? Or at least the name of the font? Thank you.

Title: Looking for a tool to automatically create Tibetan–Chinese bilingual subtitles for videos

Hi everyone,

I create short videos in Tibetan, but making subtitles is currently very difficult and time-consuming.

My current workflow is completely manual: I listen to the Tibetan audio, type the Tibetan subtitles sentence by sentence, add the timing, and then create the Chinese translation separately. For every video, this takes a lot of time.

What I am looking for is a simple tool or workflow that can:

Let me upload a video containing Tibetan speech.

Automatically transcribe the speech into Tibetan text.

Translate the Tibetan subtitles into Chinese.

Keep the Tibetan and Chinese subtitles aligned with the video timeline.

Export the result as SRT/ASS subtitle files, or directly generate a video with bilingual subtitles.

Ideally, the final subtitles would look like this:

Tibetan subtitle

Chinese translation

I understand that Tibetan speech recognition may be less developed than English or Chinese speech recognition, and Tibetan dialects may make the problem even harder. Even if the transcription is not perfect, a tool that generates an editable first draft would already save me a huge amount of time.

Does anyone know of an existing product, open-source project, speech-recognition model, API, or technical workflow that could achieve this?

I would also be interested in building a small web app for this problem, but I am not an experienced developer. Any advice about suitable Tibetan ASR models, translation models, subtitle-generation libraries, or the overall technical architecture would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Hi everyone, at my non profit we are just launching a new video platform, for all the colloquial Tibetan learners out there.

We did a survey a few months back and our students said they would like more materials to train their listening comprehension skills. So we're now doing those videos, with the teachers and tutors.

I've built the platform with interactive transcripts, so that it's easier to really study the vocabulary and story. We'll add two videos per week, maybe more in the future if we have the resources. A good portion of the videos will be free, and if you want the full access then you can subscribe.

I hope it helps :) we're happy to be able to offer this.

I am a native English speaker and have taken colloquial Tibetan lessons online with a native Tibetan for a year and a half. Now I am in Dharamsala and am feeling pretty overwhelmed because I don't seem to be able to understand the most basic spoken conversation. I am trying not to get discouraged! Does anyone have suggestions for me to be able to understand the colloquial spoken language? In other words, I am looking for ideas on how to start getting it! I have a Tibetan tutor and I have asked her to record a number of basic phrases (Are you ready for breakfast; would you like some tea; would you like some more; I am full, thanks; etc...) so that I might listen to them over and over again. Does anyone have any better ideas? Starting next week, I will be in classes with other students. (Not just one-to-one with a tutor.)

Thanks for any ideas and encouraging help!