In this article, we’ll look at which modern languages belong to this family, how many people speak them and where their similarities lie. The most important Tibetan branch of language under threat is, however, the Ladakhi language of the Western Tibetan group, in the Ladakh region of India. "Some Reflections on the Mysterious Nature of Tibetan Language" In: Hahn, Michael. One common feature among many Sino-Tibetan languages is that they are often tonal. (invitation from WeChat users only). The unaspirated stops /p/, /t/, /c/, and /k/ typically become voiced in the low tone and are pronounced [b], [d], [ɟ], and [ɡ], respectively. Mandarin, which includes Modern Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect), is not only the most important language of the Sino-Tibetan family but also has the most ancient writing tradition still in use of any modern language. In terms of grammar, it’s tricky to make generalizations about the family as a whole. The written language is based on Classical Tibetan and is highly conservative. Ant. Did you know that almost every language spoken between Iceland and India has the same origin? By some accounts, there are as many as 50 million Sinitic language speakers (mostly Cantonese) in North America, South America, Australia and Europe. You can also give immediate feedback in our language Wiki Feedback Forum.bn:তিব্বতি ভাষা, བོད་ཡིག་བརྡ་ཚད་ལྡན་དུ་སྒྱུར་བའི་ལ ས་དོན་ཨུ་ཡོན་ལྷན་ཁང་གིས་བསྒྲིགས, https://wiki.kidzsearch.com/w/index.php?title=Tibetan_language&oldid=4886497, Articles containing Tibetan language text, Committee for the Standardisation of the Tibetan Language. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Lhasa Tibetan. People who speak different dialects often cannot easily communicate with each other orally. Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Bambara Basque Tibetan was the main language of instruction in 98% of TAR primary schools in 1996; today, Mandarin is introduced in early grades only in urban schools.... Because less than four out of ten TAR Tibetans reach secondary school, primary school matters most for their cultural formation. 2003. [8] Students who continue on to tertiary education have the option of studying humanistic disciplines in Tibetan at a number of minority colleges in China. Sino-Tibetan > Tibeto-Burman > Tibeto-Kanauri > Bodish > Tibetic > Central Tibetan > Standard Tibetan. All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. "[12], Some scholars also question such claims because most Tibetans continue to reside in rural areas where Chinese is rarely spoken, as opposed to Lhasa and other Tibetan cities where Chinese can often be heard.