Learning Tibetan

With Short-Utterance Digital Sounds

by

Bill Magee, Ph.D.

May, 2007

Short-utterance digital sound (SUDS) programs are collections of audio files, each usually containing no more than a single sentence of Tibetan speech (sometimes followed by a translation). Since each Tibetan sentence is a discrete file, each can be treated as a single computer data object. Like all such data, SUDS can be flexibly displayed, played, and replayed according to the needs of students, on many different computers.

Most importantly, short-utterance digital sound recordings give a language student the ability immediately and precisely to retrieve the beginning of any sentence and to replay it as needed. The ability to replay each sentence over and over without rewinding tapes or searching long audio files quickly increases hearing and speaking proficiency. Comprehension becomes complete when short-utterance digital sound recordings are studied along with Tibetan and English transcripts. When combined with printed or scanned versions of the Tibetan and English, SUDS programs can be a significant part of a Tibetan language student or oral interpreter's training.

Short-utterance digital sound lessons are cheap and fairly easy to produce; requiring for the most part only normal office equipment. Universities and Dharma Centers can produce their own short utterance recordings and accompanying materials using resident teachers and local languages. Eventually, there could be large on-line libraries of SUDS files and accompanying scanned language materials, including Tibetan-to-Chinese, Tibetan-to-Italian, and so forth.

The programs included here are for demonstration and education purposes only. You may distribute them freely but they are not to be sold.
 

Programs

The Tibetan Alphabet Table. Click on the letters and hear Geshe Gelek pronounce them.

Dzong-ka-ba’s "Three Principal Aspects of the Path". Click on each stanza or line to hear Geshe Gelek recite that stanza or line. Visit the glossary for the individual words of each line.

Kensur Ngawang Lekden lecturing on Dzong-ka-ba’s "Three Principal Aspects of the Path". These files have been cut into short-utterance digital sound recordings for ease of repetition. Each file contains a short "sound-bite" of Kensur Lekden lecturing on the three principal aspects followed by an English translation by Professor Jeffrey Hopkins. These files are meant to be downloaded and played on a home computer. Extremely useful for training to be a translator of Tibetan oral teachings.

His Holiness Dalai Lama XIV "Explaining Buddhism". These files have been cut into short-utterance digital sound recordings for ease of repetition. Each file contains a short "sound-bite" of His Holiness Dalai Lama lecturing on various topics followed by an English translation by Professor Jeffrey Hopkins. These files are meant to be downloaded and played on a home computer. Extremely useful for training to be a translator of Tibetan oral teachings.