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Texts & Resources
HOW TO READ CLASSICAL TIBETAN, VOLUME ONE: A SUMMARY OF THE GENERAL PATH
Craig Preston (Snow Lion, 2005)
How to Read Classical Tibetan will show you—at your own pace—all the relationships that make Tibetan easy to read. It is a complete language course built around the exposition of a famous Tibetan text, Summary of the General Path to Buddhahood, written at the beginning of the fifteenth century. All the language tools you need to work at your own pace are in one place.
HOW TO READ CLASSICAL TIBETAN, VOLUME 2: BUDDHIST TENETS
Craig Preston (Snow Lion, 2009)
This book serves a dual purpose: the student learns both grammar and philosophy at the same time.With easy-to-understand diagrams, Preston shows how to find your way through Tibetan sentences. The book also helps students of the Tibetan language gain entry into the genre of tenets, which is the comparative study of the original schools of Buddhist thought in India.
FLUENT TIBETAN
Bill Magee and Betsy Napper (Snow Lion, 2016)
The most systematic and extensive course system available in spoken Tibetan language, Fluent Tibetan was developed by a team of language experts working in conjunction with five indigenous Tibetan speakers, over a two-year period, under a grant from the International Research and Studies Program of the Department of Education in Washington D.C. The Fluent Tibetan package consists of a 1,000-page textbook and MP3 audio recordings, arranged in fifteen units. All the voices in the dialogues and drills are those of indigenous Tibetan speakers and the material is given by both male and female voices alternatively. The Tibetan voices are exceptionally clear. The end-of-text glossary is both Tibetan–English and English–Tibetan.
TIBETAN VERB LEXICON SECOND EDITION, UPDATED AND EXPANDED
Paul Hackett (Snow Lion, 2019)
With over 4,500 entries of the most frequently used Tibetan verbs, this expanded edition of Hackett’s highly acclaimed Tibetan Verb Lexicon is an incomparable lexical resource. This comprehensive verb dictionary includes various verb forms, verbal collocations, auxiliary constructions together with grammatical information, Sanskrit equivalents, and example sentences, making it a vital tool for any translator, writer, or scholar who intends to maximize the quality of their work related to the Tibetan language.
LEARNING CLASSICAL TIBETAN: A READER FOR TRANSLATING BUDDHIST TEXTS
Paul Hackett (Snow Lion, 2019)
Designed for both classroom use and independent study, Learning Classical Tibetan is a modern and accessible reader for studying traditional Buddhist texts. Unlike other readers of Classical Tibetan, this is a comprehensive manual for navigating Tibetan Buddhist literature drawing on a monastic curriculum. Utilizing the most up-to-date teaching methods and tools for Tibetan language training, students learn to navigate the grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and style of Classical Tibetan while also engaging the content of Buddhist philosophical works.
TRANSLATING BUDDHISM FROM TIBETAN
Joe Wilson (Snow Lion, 1998)
Based on the system developed by Jeffrey Hopkins at the University of Virginia, this book presents in lessons with drills and reading exercises a practical introduction to Tibetan grammar syntax and technical vocabulary used in Buddhist works on philosophy and meditation. An extremely well-designed learning system, it serves as an introduction to reading and translating and to Buddhist philosophy and meditation.
RESOURCES
BUDDHIST CANONS RESEARCH DATABASE
The Buddhist Canons Research Database is a resource that offers complete bibliographic information (with internal crosslinks and links to external resources) for the roughly 5,000 texts contained in the Tibetan Buddhist canon, and offers both general and targeted full text search access to those texts (approximately 15 million syllables).
DIFFICULT POINTS FOR THE ARRANGING OF THE LETTERS
Yang-jen-ga-way-lo-dro's Grammar Verse
DIGITAL DEBATE ASSISTANT
Bill Magee's Digital Debate Assistant, provides students of Tibetan logic with a graphical way to envision aspects of a typical Collected Topics debate.
DRILLS FOR PRONUNCIATION
Joe Wilson's Translating Buddhism From Tibetan (Snow Lion, 1992)
LEARN TIBETAN! / བོད་སྐད་སྦྱང་ཨ་
Resources for learning classical and colloquial Tibetan Language
SOUNDS OF THE CONSONANTS
Spoken by Ge-she Ge-lek-cho-dak
THL
The Tibetan & Himalayan Library
TIBETAN-ENGLISH DICTIONARY
Christian Steinert's online dictionary. You can find information about other dictionary sources and various other bits and pieces about Tibetan Buddhism and computing at: www.christian-steinert.de
UMA TIBET
The UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies is a non-profit organization dedicated to translating texts into English and Chinese from the shared heritage of Tibetan and Inner Asian Buddhist systems. All UMA's publications present English and Tibetan together for comparison. We distribute our translations free of charge across the internet.