This book is intended to describe the reading of texts in the
classical Tibetan language. It is not a complete survey
of all aspects of Tibetan grammar, although I have tried to include everything I thought it was important to know.
It is intended to describe the READING of classical Tibetan; therefore it will not attempt to teach the reader to
speak either Old Tibetan or some mode Tibetan dialect. Rather my aim has been to provide procedures for the
understanding of TEXT that is, coherent discourses with literary or philosophical content, whose authors used the
resources of their language to convey meaning.
Moreover, this book describes the reading of CLASSICAL Tibetan. I have excluded from systematic consideration
the mode newspaper language at one end and the language of translated Indic texts at the other. This leaves a
sufficiently immense corpus of written Tibetan material for us to work from.
of all aspects of Tibetan grammar, although I have tried to include everything I thought it was important to know.
It is intended to describe the READING of classical Tibetan; therefore it will not attempt to teach the reader to
speak either Old Tibetan or some mode Tibetan dialect. Rather my aim has been to provide procedures for the
understanding of TEXT that is, coherent discourses with literary or philosophical content, whose authors used the
resources of their language to convey meaning.
Moreover, this book describes the reading of CLASSICAL Tibetan. I have excluded from systematic consideration
the mode newspaper language at one end and the language of translated Indic texts at the other. This leaves a
sufficiently immense corpus of written Tibetan material for us to work from.