Geshe Chodrak Dictionary vs Dege Kham Dialect Dictionary

Geshe Chodrak’s dictionary is one of very few native Tibetan-Tibetan dictionaries written; it is also the least influenced by Chinese thought and needs. It features short but precise definitions and includes obscure terms not found elsewhere, making it extremely useful to students of the language at all levels. There have not been many native Tibetan dictionaries. The few that were made in earlier times were almost unusable because they were written in a style that did not allow for easy look-up of terms. In the 20th century, three dictionaries were made that were, for the first time, usable as dictionaries. The first was made in Lhasa in the 1940’s prior to the Communist takeover. It was the dictionary presented here, made by Geshe Chodrak with the assistance of the remarkably erudite and modern scholar, Gendun Chophel. The two other major dictionaries were made in the 1970’s and 1980’s after the Communist takeover; they are the dag yig gsar sgrigs New Style of Compilation Pure Letters and the bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo The Great Chinese-Tibetan Dictionary. All three dictionaries are useful. However, the two later dictionaries have both been considerably influenced by Chinese thought and needs, often in a way detrimental to the contents of the dictionary. Geshe Chodrak’s dictionary on the other hand has was written in a purely Tibetan situation without another culture overseeing the work and insisting on changes that suited its own needs.

Study the spoken Dege dialect of Tibetan with this comprehensive trilingual dictionary. The Tibetan literary (or written) language and its script have a long history, going back to the middle of the 7th century. There are many excellent dictionaries of the literary language which help the user master that genre of Tibetan. Learn the spoken language: The colloquial dialects of Tibetan vary significantly from the literary language, and as these colloquial languages are not typically written down, there are very few dictionaries of the colloquial language. The few extant dictionaries of the colloquial dialects are in the Lhasa and Amdo dialects. This is a dictionary of the Dege dialect, which is a major dialect in the Kham cluster of dialects. The Dege dialect is a prestigious dialect, considered so because of its close relationship to literary Tibetan. Recordings and phonetics to help with pronunciation: This dictionary is not intended to replace the literary language dictionaries. Its primary purpose is to aid non-native speakers of the Dege dialect to learn to speak this dialect. It uses the Tibetan script to write the language down, and the phonetic transcription and the recordings are there to aid the learner in pronouncing the words. - Trilingual Tibetan - Chinese - English dictionary - Search for words in all 3 languages - Search history - Parts of speech - Definitions, example sentences - Phonetic spelling using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - Audio recordings for words and example sentences - Guide to understanding the Dege dialect - Reference of phonology and verbs