Talk:Classical Tibetan

Name of this article

Can I suggest renaming this article to something beginning with the word "Tibet" or "Tibetan", e.g., "Tibetan Classical Language". This would facilitate browsing among Wikipedia articles that begin with "Tibet". What do others think? Moonsell (talk) 07:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

The usual term is "Classical Tibetan", so it makes no sense to rename the article. However, if you think it would help people find the article, you could create a redirect page "Tibetan Classical Language" or "Tibetan language (Classical)" that points to this article.

Chris Fynn (talk) 17:10, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

factual accuracy

The topic of this article, as a "language" spoken from 11th–19th centuries in Tibet, is apparently contradictory with the fact that during Qing dynasty Central Tibetan has generally lost final sonorant codas with the vowel umlauted while during Ming dynasty it was all kept. It is highly unlikely that the L1 speakers of Central Tibetan in 19th century spoke a language mutually intelligible with the language spoken by an L1 speaker during 11th century. Please provide some evidence that the living language during 19th century was indeed intelligible with 11th century Classical Tibetan. Simply someone write in Classical Tibetan doesn't form an evidence because even in 21th century someone may write in Classical Tibetan. 209.2.228.41 (talk) 02:31, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

This article has been used as the primary topic of Tibetan language to circumvent the inconvenient fact that Tibetan is a language. The article really should have been written in the tone of Classical Chinese in that during most of its period it doesn't seem to be a L1 language but as a literary language (but I am not too familiar with the topic. Please correct me if I was wrong). 209.2.228.41 (talk) 02:41, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

The article now reads 9th–12th centuries. I don't know what source you're using for the final sonorant codas, but the article is now no longer factually inaccurate as it was before. Accordingly, I'd be very grateful if a third party (i.e. not me or 209.2.228.41) could remove the maintenance template, as it is no longer necessary. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 13:44, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

number of stages

I don't know much about Tibetan, but shouldn't "four" be "five"?

There are four recognised stages of Tibetan: Archaic, Old, Classical, Medieval and Modern.

AdamFunk (talk) 17:44, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Agreed! Although I would say "Medieval Tibetan" is less 'coherent' a classification than the others. Michael Ly (talk) 09:13, 21 July 2026 (UTC)