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Amdo Tibetan (Tibetan script: ཨ་མདོའི་སྐད་, Wylie: A-mdo’i skad, Lhasa dialect: [ámtokɛ́ʔ], Amdo Tibetan pronunciation: [amdu ʂkal] (Zêkog dialect)[2], Amdo Tibetan pronunciation: [amdu (h)kɛl] (Bla-Brang dialect)[3]), or Amdo dialect is the Tibetic language spoken in Amdo (now mostly in Qinghai, some in Ngawa and Gannan). It has two varieties, the farmer dialects and the nomad dialects.[4]

Amdo is one of the three branches of traditional classification of Tibetic languages (the other two being Khams Tibetan and Ü-Tsang Tibetan).[5] In terms of mutual intelligibility, Amdo speakers cannot communicate even at a basic level with the Ü-Tsang branch (including Lhasa Tibetan).[5]

Amdo Tibetan has 70% lexical similarity with Central Tibetan and Khams Tibetan.[6]

The nomad dialect of Amdo Tibetan is closer to classical written Tibetan as it preserves the word-initial consonant clusters and it is non-tonal, both now elided in the Ü-Tsang branch (including Lhasa Tibetan). Hence, its conservatism in phonology has become a source of pride among Amdo Tibetans.[7][4]

Amdo is one of the Tibetic languages that have undergone a spelling reform to make the written form closer to the spoken language: Guŋthaŋpa Dkonmchog Bstanpa˛i Sgronme (1762–1823) wrote “the Profound Dharma given in the vernacular so as to be well understood by all people of weak intellect” in the early 19th century using the vernacular of the time.[8] Modern Amdo works have continued the use of vernacular-based orthography: the 2007 novel Joys and Sorrows of the Nagtsang Boy, originally “written in kha skad“, was translated to literary Tibetan and published in India in 2008.[9]

Dialects

Dialects are:[10]

Bradley (1997)[11] includes Thewo and Choni as close to Amdo if not actually Amdo dialects.

Mabzhi is a dialect belonging to the Kokonor group of Amdo Tibetan (Tsering Samdrup and Suzuki 2017).[12][13]

mDungnag, a divergent Tibetan language spoken in Gansu, is not mutually intelligible with any of the Amdo dialects.[14]

Hua (2001)[15] contains word lists of the Xiahe County 夏河, Tongren County 同仁, Xunhua County 循化, Hualong County 化隆, Hongyuan County 红原, and Tianjun County 天峻 dialects of Amdo Tibetan in Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

List of Amdo Tibetan dialects[16]:

  • Dmarthang དམར་ཐང — spoken in Hongyuan County (Wylie dmar དམར means “red”, thang ཐང means “steppe“, hence “红” and “原” respectively in Mandarin Chinese), characterised by its preservation of prefixed consonant sounds and VC codas
  • Ngawa རྔ་བ — spoken in Ngawa County (not to be confused with Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture), characterised by its preservation of prefixed consonant sounds through secondary articulation and consonant backing in VC codas, e.g. ag ཨག /ak/ > [ɐq], a’ ཨའ /a/ > [aɦ]
  • Maqu རྨ་ཆུ — spoken in Maqu County, characterised by its preservation of prefixed consonant sounds and emerging changes through core consonant affrication, e.g. dra དྲ /ʈʂa/, instead of /ra/ in Dmarthang or /ʈa/ in Ngawa
  • Thewo ཐེ་བོ — spoken in western Têwo County, characterised by its loss of consonant endings in VC codas, e.g. abs ཨབས /uo/ (possible influence from neighbouring Khams dialects)
  • Gyersgang — spoken in central Têwo County, previously classified under the Thewo dialect; characterised by its coda realisations for extra-short, short and long vowels not found in any other Amdo dialect, e.g. a ཨ (or any consonant cluster without a vowel diacritic) can be realised as [a], [aː], [ɐ], [ɐ̆], [ɐː], [ɑː], [ə], [əː], [ɛ] or [ŏ]
  • Jonê ཅོ་ནེ — spoken in Jonê County, possibly a pitch dialect or with a 2-tone system (high “1” and low “2”)
  • Zêkog རྩེ་ཁོག — standard vulgar dialect spoken in Zêkog County, characterised by voiceless prefixed consonants and extremely conservative vowel fronting
  • Bla-Brang བླ་བྲང — standard classical dialect spoken in Xiahe County (where Labrang Monestary is located), characterised by slight loss of prefixed consonant sounds and nasal coronalisation, e.g. bca བཅ is [ptɕa] in Zêkog but [tɕa] in Bla-Brang, dpya དཔྱ is [hɕa] or [ɣɕa] in Z. but [ɕa] in B., mda མད is [mda] in Z. but [nda] in B.
  • Rebgong རེབ་གོང — spoken in Tongren County, characterised by vowel epenthesis between consonants in prefix clusters, e.g. bda བད is realised as [ᵊda] or even [ʰᵊda], ska སྐ can be pronounced as [ᵊxka], [hka] (like in neighbouring Amdo dialects), [ka] (less conservative), [rka] (Zêkog influence) or [xka] (unique to Rebgong)
  • Ya-rdzi ཡ་རྫི — spoken in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, characterised by its lack of voiceless prefixed consonants and innovative VC coda pronunciation, e.g. am ཨམ /am/ > [an], ar ཨར /ar/ > [ɛ]
  • Bayan བཱ་ཡན — spoken in Hualong Hui Autonomous County, characterised by presence of sonorants in both V/VC codas, e.g. e’u ཨེའུ, is ཨིས are pronounced [z̩], el ཨེལ, us ཨུས are pronounced [z̩ʷ]
  • Themchen ཐེམ་ཆེན — spoken in Tianjun County, characterised by its conservative pronunciation and glide epenthesis, e.g. bka བཀ can be pronounced [ka] or [kwa], bkra བཀྲ = [ptɕa]/[ʈʂwa], bra བྲ = [ptʂa]/[ptʂwa]
  • Arik ཨ་རིག — spoken in Qilian County, characterised by its large shift in pronunciation for prefixed consonant combinations (possibly due to neighbouring Turkic or Mongolic influence), e.g. dgra དགྲ = [ɣdʑa], gca གཅ = [ɣcça], ‘khra འཁྲ = [pcça]

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Retroflex (Alveolo-)
palatal 		Velar Uvular/
Glottal
plain sib. plain lab.
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive/
Affricate 		plain p t ts ʈ tɕ k
aspirated pʰ tʰ tsʰ ʈʰ tɕʰ kʰ
voiced b d dz ɖ dʑ ɡ
Fricative plain s ʂ ɕ x h hʷ
voiced z ʐ ʑ ʁ ʁʷ
aspirated sʰ
Semivowel w j
Lateral voiceless ɬ
voiced l
  • Retroflex stop sounds /ʈ, ʈʰ, ɖ/ may also be pronounced as affricate sounds [ʈʂ, ʈʂʰ, ɖʐ] in free variation.[17]
  • Voiced consonants are often heard as pre-breathy-voiced (i.e. /d/ [ʱd]) among different dialects.
  • /ʐ/, typically written phonemically as /r/, can be heard as an alveolar flap [ɾ] in word-medial positions.
  • /x/ may also be heard as a palatal [ç] in free variation.
  • Labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ may also occur in words of foreign origin.

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i ɨ u
Mid e ə o
Open a
  • Amdo Tibetan typically has a four-vowel system as /e, ə, a, o/, as all close vowels [i, ɨ, u] have merged to one vowel /ə/. However, when there is a consonant sound within the coda position, the pronunciation of /ə/ is changed, thus realizing one of the three close sounds [i, ɨ, u], depending on the consonant in place.
  • /a/ may typically be heard as more fronted before a mid vowel /e/, and may also be realized as an open-mid [ɛ] in some environments.[18]

Media

Inside China
  • The Qinghai Tibetan Radio (མཚོ་སྔོན་བོད་སྐད་རླུང་འཕྲིན།) station broadcasts in Amdolese Tibetan on FM 99.7.[19]
Diaspora
  • Radio Free Asia broadcasts in three Tibetan languages: Standard Tibetan, Khams language and Amdolese language.[20]

See also

References

  1. ^ Amdolese at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ “***IPA realisations of different langauges written in the Tibetan script”. Google Docs. Retrieved 2026-04-15.
  3. ^ “***IPA realisations of different langauges written in the Tibetan script”. Google Docs. Retrieved 2026-04-15.
  4. ^ a b Reynolds, Jermay J. (2012). Language variation and change in an Amdo Tibetan village: Gender, education and resistance (PDF) (PhD thesis). Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University. p. 19-21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-08-12.
  5. ^ a b Gelek, Konchok (2017). “Variation, contact, and change in language: Varieties in Yul shul (northern Khams)”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language (245): 91–92.
  6. ^ “China”. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Nineteenth Edition. 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-09-09.
  7. ^ Makley, Charlene; Dede, Keith; Hua, Kan; Wang, Qingshan (1999). “The Amdo Dialect of Labrang” (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 22 (1): 101. doi:10.32655/LTBA.22.1.05. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-05.
  8. ^ Zeisler, Bettina (2006). “Why Ladakhi must not be written – Being part of the Great Tradition Another kind of global thinking”. In Anju Saxena; Lars Borin (eds.). Lesser-Known Languages of South Asia. p. 178.
  9. ^ de Heering, Xénia (June 2014). Breaching and Bridging Literary Traditions? A Few Observations about a Text “Written in kha skad” and Its Translation into Literary Tibetan. The 6th international Conference “issues of far eastern literatures” Panel – Modernizing the Tibetan Literary tradition. p. 8.
  10. ^ N. Tournadre (2005) “L’aire linguistique tibétaine et ses divers dialectes.” Lalies, 2005, n°25, p. 7–56 [1]
  11. ^ Bradley (1997) Archived December 8, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Samdrup, Tsering; Suzuki, Hiroyuki (2017). Migration history and tsowa divisions as a supplemental approach to dialectology in Amdo Tibetan: A case study on Mangra County (PDF). pp. 57–65. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  13. ^ Suzuki, Hiroyuki; Wangmo, Sonam; Samdrup, Tsering (2021-03-30). “A Contrastive Approach to the Evidential System in Tibetic Languages: Examining Five Varieties from Khams and Amdo”. Gengo Kenkyu (Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan). 159: 69–101. doi:10.11435/gengo.159.0_69. ISSN 0024-3914. Retrieved 2023-03-21.
  14. ^ Shao, Mingyuan 邵明园 (2018). Hexi Zoulang binwei Zangyu Dongnahua yanjiu 河西走廊濒危藏语东纳话研究 [Study on the mDungnag dialect, an endangered Tibetan language in Hexi Corridor]. Guangzhou: Zhongshan University Publishing House 中山大学出版社.
  15. ^ Hua Kan 华侃主编 (ed). 2001. Vocabulary of Amdo Tibetan dialects [藏语安多方言词汇]. Lanzhou: Gansu People’s Press [甘肃民族出版社].
  16. ^ “Tibetic/Bodish dialect map”. Google My Maps. Retrieved 2026-04-15.
  17. ^ Ebihara, Shiho (2011). Amdo Tibetan. Yamakoshi, Yasuhiro (ed.), Grammatical Sketches from the Field: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. pp. 43–48.
  18. ^ Rgyal, Lha-Byams; Sung, Kuo-ming (2005). Colloquial Amdo Tibetan : A Complete Course for Adult English Speakers. National Press for Tibetan Studies.
  19. ^ 青海藏语广播网 མཚོ་སྔོན་བོད་སྐད་རླུང་འཕྲིན། – 青海藏语广播网 མཚོ་སྔོན་བོད་སྐད་རླུང་འཕྲིན།
  20. ^ “བོད་སྐད་སྡེ་ཚན།”. rfa.org.

Bibliography