About Learning Tibetan

This is about learning Tibetan, or actually learning any language. To start with, there's no single magic system that works for everyone. Every brain is different, or let's say we all have different predispositions based on past actions. So then there might be as many ways to learn languages as there are minds.  

However, it's good to shop around and learn about various ways to learn languages. You could spend an evening or more learning from various polyglots (those who know multiple languages or could learn new ones quickly). YouTube has many videos where various polyglots explain their system. Do a search on 'polyglot' and you will find those.

I took a list from Steve Cochran's YouTube presentation called Seven Secrets to Learn Any language that resonated for me.  I slightly rewrote his seven points below focusing on the Tibetan language.

1. Spend the time

There are stories of people who learned spoken Tibetan in two weeks and classical Tibetan in a month. I won't say it's impossible, for for most of us, this is a life-long journey. If you put in the time you get results. It's also good to work on language skills every day for a short time than doing a marathon learning sequence once a week. It's all about repetition and seeing patterns over and over until they become 'second nature'.

2. Do what you like to do

Combine the language learning with specific reasons you like to learn Tibetan. Do you want to read more works by Atisha than has been translated so far? Or know to have simple conversations with Tibetan people or your teachers? Or do you want to learn དབུ་མ་ in depth but slowly by looking how translators translated a key text? Read Tibetan news web sites online? Or try to grapple on a translation of a  text without any pressure to ever publish it officially? There are many other similar examples where you are so excited so the learning happens along the way.

3. Learn to notice

Languages have patterns and structure, if you learn to notice these then any other text you look at will immediately become familiar. Same with spoken language. If you learn simple structures how the spoken Tibetan is, it will help with understanding similar situations. It's all about noticing these patterns, over and over. 

4. Word over grammar

This is somewhat controversial and might apply more to spoken Tibetan, but if you know a lot of words you can communicate and understand the words said. Few Tibetans will correct your grammar, but if you don't know the words they will not understand what you are saying and vice versa.

I grew up in a family where my mother spoke one language and my father another one, so I learned two languages from early age. There was no grammar taught. It was all based on learning words and how it all worked together.

As for written Tibetan, this is where grammar is needed to sort out very complex sentences. However, there are ways to recognize the grammar without a need to spend months and months on rules alone. Let's say you see a pattern and you don't know how that pattern works. Then you learn the grammar part for that pattern and then you know it.

5. Be patient

This is true for any endeavor. Don't punish yourself and don't feel that you will never learn anything. It all will work out over time. You learn ཆོས, and then ཆོས་ཅན་ and then ཆོས་ཉིད་, and later དེ་ཁོ་ན་ཉིད་ and suddenly you have a nice dharma vocabulary available. Learning three words a day (with repetition) means 1095 words a year and that is a very nice set of words.

6. Get the tools

The days are over when the two main Tibetan dictionaries were written by an Indian Spy and a German missionary. And you had to carry either or both around in your baggage like the early Western Translators did (and we are grateful for their work). You could now have a wealth of Tibetan tools such as dictionaries on your smart phone or laptop. You could also use many language learning tools such as Memrise for learning Tibetan. Each tool and web site could could cover a specific section, word learning, grammar and so forth. It's just a matter to search and find the tools you like using. Internet searches could actually find for you lots of unexpected resources and tools for Tibetan learning.

7. Become an independent learner

There are many wonderful classroom or online courses for Tibetan. However, you need to take charge of your learning, what you want to learn, how, when, and where you want to go next. Ultimately most of the learning happens when you spend your own time looking over a sentence, or asking for help, or reading about Tibetan, compare how translators translated material, and so forth. Oddly, struggle helps with learning languages. You learn to know what you don't know.

Hope this benefits.