Amdo Tibetan


Amdo Tibetan[Central Tibetan|], or Amdo dialect is the Tibetic language spoken in Amdo. It has two varieties, the farmer dialects and the nomad dialects.
Amdo is one of the three branches of traditional classification of Tibetic languages. In terms of mutual intelligibility, Amdo speakers cannot communicate even at a basic level with the Ü-Tsang branch.
Amdo Tibetan has 70% lexical similarity with Central Tibetan and Khams Tibetan.
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. Hence, its conservatism in phonology has become a source of pride among Amdo Tibetans.
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 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. 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.

Dialects

Dialects are:
  • North Kokonor
  • West Kokonor,
  • Southeast Kokonor
  • Labrang
  • Golok
  • Ngapa
  • Kandze
Bradley 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.
mDungnag, a divergent Tibetan language spoken in Gansu, is not mutually intelligible with any of the Amdo dialects.
Hua 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.

Phonology

Consonants

  • Retroflex stop sounds may also be pronounced as affricate sounds in free variation.
  • Voiced consonants are often heard as pre-breathy-voiced among different dialects.
  • , typically written phonemically as, can be heard as an alveolar flap in word-medial positions.
  • may also be heard as a palatal in free variation.
  • Labio-dental fricatives and may also occur in words of foreign origin.

Vowels

  • Amdo Tibetan typically has a four-vowel system as, as all close vowels have merged to one vowel. However, when there is a consonant sound within the coda position, the pronunciation of is changed, thus realizing one of the three close sounds, depending on the consonant in place.
  • may typically be heard as more fronted before a mid vowel, and may also be realized as an open-mid in some environments.

Media

;Inside China
;Diaspora