EURPhon: Lhasa Tibetan

Phylum: Sino-Tibetan

Genus: Tibetic

Lat/lon: 29.65, 91.116667

ISO code: bod

Consonants

Basic short series

	bilabial	labio-velar	alveolar	retroflex	alveolo-palatal	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p, pʰ		t, tʰ	ʈ, ʈʰ			k, kʰ
fricative			s	ʂ				h
affricate			ts, tsʰ		tɕ, tɕʰ
nasal	m		n			ɲ	ŋ
approximant		w	ɹ, ɹ̥			j
lateral approximant			l, l̥

Short palatalised series

	velar
stop	kʲ, kʰʲ

Vowels

Basic short series

	front	central	back
close	i, y		u
close-mid	e, ø		o
open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
open		a

Long series

	front	central	back
close	iː		uː
close-mid	eː		oː
open-mid			ɔː
open		aː

Long nasalised series

	front	central	back
close	ĩː, ỹː		ũː
close-mid	ẽː, ø̃ː		õː
open-mid	ɛ̃ː
open		ãː

Tones

55, 22

Licit initial clusters

Licit finals

p, m, k, ŋ

Licit syllabic templates

(C)V(C)

Source: DeLancey, Scott. 2003. Lhasa Tibetan. In LaPolla, Randy J., and Graham Thurgood (eds.) Sino-Tibetan Languages. London: Routledge, 270–288.

Comments: “In my data voiceless [mh] occurs only in the allomorph of the negative prefix preceding aspirated stops, and only for some speakers. Some authors (Chang and Chang; 1978–81; Goldstein and Nornang 1970) report a few words with initial voiceless nasals /ñh ŋh/, but these do not occur in the speech of all speakers.” (p. 271) Numerous tonal allophones depending on vowel length and coda.