Tibetan

About the Script

Tibetan is a syllabic alphabet much like those of India and consists of consonants
with vowel signs. The Tibetan script also contains symbols for "conjunct consonants" representing a sequence of consonants.

Historically, Tibet was a center for Buddhist religion and scholarship, and the language included Sanskrit loan words. Recent political events have caused closer ties with China, so that some Chinese fonts include Tibetan characters.

For more information on the
script, see the following
pages.

Note: Depending on the region, some forms of Tibetan may also be written in Devanagari or the Arabic script (Pakistan)

Fonts for Tibetan

  • Windows – Arial Unicode MS, Microsoft Himalaya
  • Mac OS X – KaiLasa and Lokonor, plus STFangsong, STHeiti, STKaiti, STSong

Additional freeware fonts can be downloaded from from the sites below. Note that not all these fonts may work on System 9 for Macintosh, but will work in Windows and OS X .

Test Sites

If you have your browser configured correctly, the Web sites above should display the correct characters. If you have difficulties, see list below for font and browser configuration instructions.

Tibetan Fonts Download Page
བོད་ཡིག་ཡིག་གཟུགས་བབ་ལེན་དྲ་ཚིགས༎

If these sites are not displaying correctly, see the Browser Setup page for set up information.

Typing Tibetan Text

Windows

A Tibetan keyboard was available as of Windows Vista.

Third Party Tibetan Utilities

Several freeware Tibetan utlities are also available.

Macintosh

Apple includes three versions of a Tibetan keyboard, including a QWERTY transliteration version.

Mobile

Web Development

This section presents information specific to Korean. For general information about developing non-English Web sites, see the Encoding Tutorial or the Web Layout sections.

Historical Encodings

Unicode (utf-8) is the preferred encoding for Tibetan Web sites.

Language Tags

Language Tags allow browsers and other software to process text more efficiently.

  • Language Code: bo

Unicode Entity Codes

Tibetan numeric Unicode entity codes can be used for small pieces of text when other
methods to not work.

NOTE: Free downloads not tested

Tibetan Script

Windows/General

A Tibetan keyboard was available as of Windows Vista.

Third Party Tibetan Utilities

Several freeware Tibetan utlities are also available.

Macintosh

Mobile

Linux/Unix

Tibetan Unicode Fonts

Tibetan Computing

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