Tibetan Alphabet Compendium

This page features 50 Tibetan alphabet symbols, fully covering basic Tibetan consonants, Sanskrit transliteration letters, and numeral symbols. Tibetan is an abugida where each consonant inherently carries the vowel [a], with vowel marks added to change pronunciation. Below is a detailed introduction to each symbol's technical parameters and usage.

🀄 Core Consonants

ཀ (ka) is the first Tibetan consonant, commonly used in basic vocabulary. Unicode: U+0F40. LaTeX requires the Tibetan font package. HTML entity: 饀. ཁ (kha) is an aspirated voiceless velar plosive, often used to transcribe Sanskrit ख. Unicode: U+0F41, HTML entity: 饁. ག (ga) is an unaspirated voiced velar plosive, frequently used as a prefix in Tibetan grammar. Unicode: U+0F42, HTML entity: 饂. ང (nga) is a velar nasal, also one of the Tibetan suffix letters. Unicode: U+0F44, HTML entity: 饄. Note the distinction from Sanskrit transliteration characters. ཅ (ca) is an unaspirated voiceless palatal affricate. Unicode: U+0F45, HTML entity: 饅. ཆ (cha) is an aspirated voiceless palatal affricate, commonly used in syllables like "chö". Unicode: U+0F46, HTML entity: 饆. ཇ (ja) is an unaspirated voiced palatal affricate. Unicode: U+0F47, HTML entity: 饇. ཉ (nya) is a palatal nasal, categorized as a dorsal consonant in Tibetan. Unicode: U+0F49, HTML entity: 饉. ཏ (ta) is an unaspirated voiceless alveolar plosive, often found in verb roots. Unicode: U+0F4F, HTML entity: 饏. Note glyph changes when combined with subjoined letters. ཐ (tha) is an aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive. Unicode: U+0F50, HTML entity: 饐. ད (da) is an unaspirated voiced alveolar plosive, commonly used as a prefix or medial consonant. Unicode: U+0F51, HTML entity: 饑. ན (na) is an alveolar nasal, also a Tibetan suffix letter. Unicode: U+0F53, HTML entity: 饓. པ (pa) is an unaspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, often used in noun prefixes. Unicode: U+0F54, HTML entity: 饔. ཕ (pha) is an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive. Unicode: U+0F55, HTML entity: 饕. བ (ba) is an unaspirated voiced bilabial plosive, commonly used as a prefix or root. Unicode: U+0F56, HTML entity: 饖. མ (ma) is a bilabial nasal, also a Tibetan suffix letter. Unicode: U+0F58, HTML entity: 饘. ཙ (tsa) is an unaspirated voiceless alveolar affricate, commonly used in syllables like "dza". Unicode: U+0F59, HTML entity: 饙. ཚ (tsha) is an aspirated voiceless alveolar affricate. Unicode: U+0F5A, HTML entity: 饚. ཛ (dza) is an unaspirated voiced alveolar affricate, often used in Sanskrit transliteration. Unicode: U+0F5B, HTML entity: 饛. ཝ (wa) is a bilabial approximant, also used as a vowel sign carrier. Unicode: U+0F5D, HTML entity: 饝. ཞ (zha) is a voiced palatal fricative, similar to the 's' in English "measure". Unicode: U+0F5E, HTML entity: 饞. ཟ (za) is a voiced alveolar fricative. Unicode: U+0F5F, HTML entity: 饟. འ ('a) is a glottal stop or laryngeal, used as a prefix indicating high tone in Tibetan. Unicode: U+0F60, HTML entity: 饠. This is a special letter that is not pronounced independently. ཡ (ya) is a palatal approximant, often used as a subjoined letter. Unicode: U+0F61, HTML entity: 饡. ར (ra) is an alveolar trill, which transforms into forms like "རྐ" in Tibetan stacked characters. Unicode: U+0F62, HTML entity: 饢. ལ (la) is an alveolar lateral approximant, also a Tibetan suffix letter. Unicode: U+0F63, HTML entity: 饣. ཤ (sha) is a voiceless palatal fricative. Unicode: U+0F64, HTML entity: 饤. ས (sa) is a voiceless alveolar fricative, commonly used as a prefix or suffix. Unicode: U+0F66, HTML entity: 饦. ཧ (ha) is a voiceless glottal fricative. Unicode: U+0F67, HTML entity: 饧. ཨ (a) is a zero-onset consonant, also the carrier for independent vowel forms. Unicode: U+0F68, HTML entity: 饨.

🔤 Sanskrit Transliteration Letters

The Tibetan script includes a set of dedicated letters for transcribing Sanskrit Buddhist terms. གྷ (gha) transcribes the Sanskrit voiced aspirate, formed by ག with subjoined ཧ. Unicode combines U+0F42 and U+0FB7. LaTeX requires Tibetan composition commands. ཌྷ (ḍha) transcribes the Sanskrit retroflex voiced aspirate. Unicode combines U+0F4C and U+0FB7. དྷ (dha) is the alveolar voiced aspirate, formed by ད with subjoined ཧ. Unicode combines U+0F51 and U+0FB7. བྷ (bha) is the bilabial voiced aspirate, formed by བ with subjoined ཧ. Unicode combines U+0F56 and U+0FB7. ཛྷ (dzha) is the affricate voiced aspirate, formed by ཛ with subjoined ཧ. Unicode combines U+0F5B and U+0FB7. ཀྵ (kṣa) transcribes क्ष, formed by stacking ཀ and ཥ. Unicode: U+0F40 U+0FB5 U+0F65, often used in spelling "Tibet". དྷ (dda) is a retroflex voiced plosive. Unicode: U+0F52, HTML entity: 饒. བྷ (bha standalone) is the independent form of bha. Unicode: U+0F57, HTML entity: 饗, representing the same phoneme as the combined form བྷ. ཛྷ (ddha) transcribes the retroflex voiced aspirate. Unicode: U+0F5C, HTML entity: 饜. ཥ (ṣa) is a retroflex voiceless fricative, transcribing Sanskrit ष. Unicode: U+0F65, HTML entity: 饥.

🔢 Tibetan Numerals & Symbols

Tibetan has its own numeral system. ༠ (0) is Tibetan digit zero, the start of the decimal system. Unicode: U+0F20, HTML entity: ༠. ༡ (1) is Tibetan digit one, distinct in form from Tibetan letters. Unicode: U+0F21, HTML entity: ༡. ༢ (2) is Tibetan digit two. Unicode: U+0F22, HTML entity: ༢. ༣ (3) is Tibetan digit three. Unicode: U+0F23, HTML entity: ༣. ༤ (4) is Tibetan digit four. Unicode: U+0F24, HTML entity: ༤. ༥ (5) is Tibetan digit five. Unicode: U+0F25, HTML entity: ༥. ༦ (6) is Tibetan digit six. Unicode: U+0F26, HTML entity: ༦. ༧ (7) is Tibetan digit seven. Unicode: U+0F27, HTML entity: ༧. ༨ (8) is Tibetan digit eight. Unicode: U+0F28, HTML entity: ༨. ༩ (9) is Tibetan digit nine. Unicode: U+0F29, HTML entity: ༩. Tibetan numerals are widely used in scripture pagination and traditional literature. LaTeX support requires the Tibetan package.

📌 Usage Notes

When using Tibetan letters, note the following: First, Tibetan is an abugida where each consonant defaults to including the vowel [a]; vowel marks must be used to change pronunciation. Second, for LaTeX, we recommend the ctib package or XeLaTeX with Tibetan-compatible fonts. Third, HTML entities use decimal encoding and may not render in some older browsers—provide an @font-face CSS declaration for fallback. Fourth, pay attention to vertical alignment of stacked characters when typesetting Tibetan and Sanskrit transliteration. Fifth, when copying SVG source or generating PNG images, ensure your system has a Tibetan-capable font installed (e.g., Noto Sans Tibetan or Microsoft Himalaya). Sixth, some Sanskrit transliteration characters consist of multiple Unicode code points; maintain the composite sequence when extracting individual "characters".

💡 Tips

To copy a Tibetan letter's Unicode, LaTeX command, or HTML entity, simply click its card above and then click the desired item in the detail panel for one-click copying. Each symbol supports SVG vector source generation and 512×512 transparent PNG download, ideal for linguistics papers, cultural research, or teaching materials. For academic documents involving Tibetan, we recommend XeLaTeX with an appropriate Tibetan font for optimal typesetting.