Languagle #66: Tibetan
ཡོན་ཏན་ལྡན་ན་སྐྱེ་བོ་ཀུན། །མ་བསྡུས་པར་ཡང་རང་ཉིད་འདུ། །དྲི་ལྡན་མེ་ཏོག་རྒྱང་རིང་ཡང༌། །བུང་བ་སྤྲིན་གྱི་ཚོགས་བཞིན་འཁོར། །
yon tan ldan na skye bo kun / ma bsdus par yang rang nyid 'du / dri ldan me tog rgyang ring yang / bung ba sprin gyi tshogs bzhin 'khor
"If you are a talented man, every one gathers round about you, without being called; a scented flower, though it be at a far distance, is surrounded with a cloud of swarming wasps."
What it means
Real ability draws people to you without being asked for. Just as a fragrant flower attracts swarms of insects even from far away, a person of real talent and learning gathers followers without calling them. It comes from Sakya Pandita's 13th-century 'Treasury of Elegant Sayings', one of the most widely read works in Tibetan literature.
How to say it
yön-ten den na kye-wo kün, ma dü par yang rang nyi du, dri den me-tok gyang ring yang, bung-wa trin gyi tsok zhin khor
Modern Tibetan sounds very different from its spelling: many written letters are silent, which is why the romanisation above looks nothing like this. Ö and ü are said with rounded lips, as in German.
Word by word
- ཡོན་ཏན yön-ten: good qualities, talent
- སྐྱེ་བོ kye-wo: people
- མེ་ཏོག me-tok: flower
- བུང་བ bung-wa: bee (the 1855 translation says wasps)
- སྤྲིན trin: cloud
A few key words from the verse. Whole lines are too long to break down here.
Where it was written down
A verse from Sakya Pandita's Treasury of Elegant Sayings (Sa skya legs bshad), written in the 13th century. The English is Alexander Csoma de Kőrös's translation, published in 1855.
How to recognise Tibetan
Tibetan letters hang from a line along the top, like Devanagari, but they're sharper and more triangular, and letters stack on top of each other. The best clue is the small dot ་ (tsheg) between every syllable, and the upright stroke ། that ends a phrase. Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, uses exactly the same script, so the map clue matters here.
About the Tibetan language
Tibetan is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by around 6 million people on the Tibetan Plateau in China, and in Nepal, Bhutan and India, including exile communities. Its main spoken varieties, such as Lhasa (Central), Amdo and Khams Tibetan, differ enough to be hard to understand across. The script, from the 7th century, comes from an Indian Brahmi script, and its spelling has barely changed since, so many words are written with letters that are no longer pronounced.