The Tibetan Phrasebook is a phrasebook of colloquial Amdo Tibetan. It is geared towards preparing students of Amdo Tibetan to be conversational in the field of study, allowing students to pronounce and understand the phonemically complex language. The Phrasebook should be used with the accompanying audio transcript, available for free on The Tibetan Phrasebook website. Unlike many other manuals of Amdo Tibetan, the emphasis therein is not on the classical didactic grammatical approach, but the practical acquisition of the colloquial language.The Phrasebook also allows students to practice reading the two most widely utilized scripts of Tibetan: the "headed" script used mostly in print, and the "headless" script, typically used in handwriting.
The Phrasebook has eight different scenarios common to tourists, students, and researchers of Tibetan regions:
- Introducing Oneself
- Eating and Drinking
- Visiting a Tibetan Family
- Traveling
- At the Market
- At School
- On the Phone
- At the Clinic
All eight scenarios are dialogues read out-loud by a native Tibetan speaker, followed by a translation by the author, a native English speaker. For best results: listen carefully to the native Tibetan speaker's phrase and repeat as faithfully as possible. The audio is available for free on The Tibetan Phrasebook website. More advanced users can follow along by reading the Tibetan script in either the print or cursive variations. To date, The Tibetan Phrasebook is one of the only English language tools available to learn to read the "headless" (UMed) cursive script of Tibetan.
