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Old Tibetan
Old Tibetan refers to the earliest attested form of Tibetan language, reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to the early 9th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Tibetan King Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan underwent comprehensive standardization, resulting in Classical Tibetan.
Old Tibetan is characterised by many features that are lost in Classical Tibetan, including my- rather than m- before the vowels -i- and -e-, the cluster sts- which simplifies to s- in Classical Tibetan, and a reverse form of the vowel letter for i (gi-gu). Aspiration was not phonemic and many words were written indiscriminately with consonants from the aspirated or unaspirated series. Most consonants could be palatalized, and the palatal series from the Tibetan script represents palatalized coronals. The sound conventionally transcribed with the letter འ (Wylie: 'a) was a voiced velar fricative, while the voiceless rhotic and lateral are written with digraphs ཧྲ ⟨hr⟩ and ལྷ ⟨lh⟩. Unlike virtually all modern Tibetan languages, the Old Tibetan orthography did not contain silent letters, and the words were pronounced as written.
The following table is based on Hill's analysis of Old Tibetan:
In Old Tibetan, the glide /w/ occurred as a medial, but not as an initial. The Written Tibetan letter ཝ w was originally a digraph representing two Old Tibetan consonants ɦw.
Vowel Phonemes of Old Tibetan
In Old Tibetan, syllables can be quite complex with up to three consonants in the onset, two glides, and two coda consonants. This structure can be represented as (C1C2)C3(G1G2)V(C4C5), with all positions except C3 and V optional. This allows for complicated syllables like བསྒྲིགས bsgrigs "arranged" and འདྲྭ 'drwa "web", for which the pronunciations [βzɡriks] and [ɣdrʷa] can be reconstructed.
A voicing contrast only exists in slot C3 and spreads to C1 and C2 so སྒོ sgo "door" would be realized as [zɡo] while སྐུ sku "body" would be [sku]. Final consonants are always voiceless e.g. འཛིནད་ 'dzind [ɣd͡zint] and གཟུགས་ gzugs [gzuks]. The phoneme /b/ in C1 was likely realized as [ɸ] (or [β] when C3 is voiced) e.g. བསྒྲེ bsgre [βzɡre] and བརྩིས brtsis [ɸrtˢis]. The features of palatalization /i̯/ [Cʲ] and labialization /w/ [Cʷ] can be considered separate phonemes, realized as glides in G1 and G2 respectively. Only certain consonants are permitted in some syllable slots, as summarized below:
§ In C2 position, /d/ and /ɡ/ are in complementary distribution: /ɡ/ appears before /t/, /ts/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/, and /l̥/ in C3, while /d/ appears before /k/, /ɡ/, /ŋ/, /p/, /b/, and /m/ in C3. Additionally, /ɡ/ is written ⟨k⟩ before /l̥/.
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Old Tibetan
Old Tibetan refers to the earliest attested form of Tibetan language, reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to the early 9th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Tibetan King Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan underwent comprehensive standardization, resulting in Classical Tibetan.
Old Tibetan is characterised by many features that are lost in Classical Tibetan, including my- rather than m- before the vowels -i- and -e-, the cluster sts- which simplifies to s- in Classical Tibetan, and a reverse form of the vowel letter for i (gi-gu). Aspiration was not phonemic and many words were written indiscriminately with consonants from the aspirated or unaspirated series. Most consonants could be palatalized, and the palatal series from the Tibetan script represents palatalized coronals. The sound conventionally transcribed with the letter འ (Wylie: 'a) was a voiced velar fricative, while the voiceless rhotic and lateral are written with digraphs ཧྲ ⟨hr⟩ and ལྷ ⟨lh⟩. Unlike virtually all modern Tibetan languages, the Old Tibetan orthography did not contain silent letters, and the words were pronounced as written.
The following table is based on Hill's analysis of Old Tibetan:
In Old Tibetan, the glide /w/ occurred as a medial, but not as an initial. The Written Tibetan letter ཝ w was originally a digraph representing two Old Tibetan consonants ɦw.
Vowel Phonemes of Old Tibetan
In Old Tibetan, syllables can be quite complex with up to three consonants in the onset, two glides, and two coda consonants. This structure can be represented as (C1C2)C3(G1G2)V(C4C5), with all positions except C3 and V optional. This allows for complicated syllables like བསྒྲིགས bsgrigs "arranged" and འདྲྭ 'drwa "web", for which the pronunciations [βzɡriks] and [ɣdrʷa] can be reconstructed.
A voicing contrast only exists in slot C3 and spreads to C1 and C2 so སྒོ sgo "door" would be realized as [zɡo] while སྐུ sku "body" would be [sku]. Final consonants are always voiceless e.g. འཛིནད་ 'dzind [ɣd͡zint] and གཟུགས་ gzugs [gzuks]. The phoneme /b/ in C1 was likely realized as [ɸ] (or [β] when C3 is voiced) e.g. བསྒྲེ bsgre [βzɡre] and བརྩིས brtsis [ɸrtˢis]. The features of palatalization /i̯/ [Cʲ] and labialization /w/ [Cʷ] can be considered separate phonemes, realized as glides in G1 and G2 respectively. Only certain consonants are permitted in some syllable slots, as summarized below:
§ In C2 position, /d/ and /ɡ/ are in complementary distribution: /ɡ/ appears before /t/, /ts/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/, and /l̥/ in C3, while /d/ appears before /k/, /ɡ/, /ŋ/, /p/, /b/, and /m/ in C3. Additionally, /ɡ/ is written ⟨k⟩ before /l̥/.