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A Skeleton Grammar
of the Tibetan Language
ALPHABET
1. The Tibetan alphabet comprises thirty-four letters, four vowels and thirty' consonants.
2. Vowels. The following are the vowels ( WV a ), Li, Wu. e, Ho. There are no long vowels in Classical Tibetan.
Though W a is, in fact, a vowel, the Tibetan grammarians take it as a consonant, possibly owing to the fact that it is always inherent in a consonant and never used separately. We can look upon it as the vowel bearing base, and since the short a is inherent in the consonant letter as such there is no special mark for it even in connec tion with the base by.
The four vowels when added to consonants assume the following
special forms respectively :
For example :
ka Akha
ki aku Å khi Ekhu
ke  khe
ñ ko Ãkho
