The Tibetan Writing System and Phonetic Change

In this video, I show how the Tibetan writing system worked at its beginning, and justify the idiosyncrasies of the Modern Standard Tibetan writing system by considering the phonetic evolution of Old Tibetan since the script's creation and standardization. This video applies specifically to Modern Standard Tibetan, which is based on the dialect of Tibetan spoken in Lhasa. There are other dialects of Tibetan which have differing phonologies. Most of the information regarding Old Tibetan phonology and evolution was pulled from Stephan Beyer's "The Classical Tibetan Language" as well as Nathan Hill's writings on Old Tibetan and on the Sino-Tibetan family. Nicolas Tournadre's "Manual of Standard Tibetan" was also referenced with regards to the modern language.