Sarnath International Nyingma Institute

Saturday, September 3 - November 19, 2022

12 live zoom sessions, 7 - 8:30 PM CET, 10 - 11:30 PST

Beginning Classical Tibetan at SINI has been designed for students who wish to learn Classical Tibetan, (ཡིག་སྐད། yig skad), also known as written or literary Tibetan. The course, taught by Tenpa Tsering, a native Tibetan instructor, includes twelve live weekly Zoom classes, course materials, and access to office hours with the instructor.

Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of Classical Tibetan grammar. This course will establish a strong foundation for reading and actually understanding classical Tibetan texts from numerous genres. Upon completion of this course, having also developed a solid vocabulary, including how complex phrases are constructed from more simple syllables, students will be able to read classical Tibetan texts over a large range of the Buddhist literary corpus, as well as texts on medicine, astrology, fine arts, logic, poetry, and more. They will learn to accurately comprehend the text’s meaning, using the appropriate dictionaries. 

This course will cover some of the most important grammatical elements, including verbs and tenses, noun categories with their formative particles (པ། པོ། བ། བོ། མ། མོ།), adjectives, articles, pronouns, plural formation particles, numbers, cases, conjunctions, and punctuation. Along with learning grammatical concepts, during the class students will be given practical opportunities to read excerpts from classical Tibetan texts. 

Once familiar with the grammatical rules, Tibetan classical texts become more approachable. For students who have been studying for many years but are not clear on how to accurately interpret such rules, this course will help to clarify their misunderstandings, and thus lead to a more confident approach for further study of intermediate-level classical Tibetan. 

Prerequisites: Prior knowledge of the basics of Tibetan, including knowing the alphabet and syllable formation.

All course materials will be available for one year on the Moodle learning platform.