Tibetan

About Tibetan

Tibetan is spoken on the Tibetan Plateau in western China and by Tibetan communities in India, Nepal and Bhutan. Standard Tibetan, based on the speech of Lhasa, had about 1.2 million speakers in a 1990 count, and there are many other Tibetan varieties. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region together with Chinese.

Tibetan has its own script, written from left to right, which dates from the 7th century and has changed little since, so spelling is far from pronunciation. Lhasa Tibetan is tonal. Tibetan also has a respectful vocabulary, with separate honorific words for many everyday things, used when speaking to or about elders and lamas.

FamilySino-Tibetan, Tibetic
Speakersabout 1.2 million, Standard Tibetan (1990)
Where spokenChina (Tibet), India, Nepal, Bhutan
ScriptTibetan script
Codesbo (ISO 639-1), bod (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue, 18th edition, citing 1990, via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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