Back To Basics Part 4

Next is learning a bigger and bigger vocabulary of words. Sometimes the wood carvings are not that easy to understand, and you need to sort out even possible missing strokes of words to figure out what is really there. or then there's the classical issue of the nga versus da letters.

Here's an example, sngo ba or sdo ba? sngo ba means becoming greenish, green tingled, or even blue in some cases. sdo ba means compare, rival, compete, exchange, or risk. So you need to find out the right translation in case it's hard to see the difference between letters. Sometimes there's not even such a word in Tibetan with either letter used.

It's good to invest in a good dictionary, of which electronic dictionaries are the fastest ones to be used when translating. Over time you also start learning the words and know exactly what word was used in a specific sentence.