Locale Bo 001

Reference data for the Tibetan locale — endonym བོད་སྐད་, written in the Tibetan script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: bo-001
• ISO 639-1: bo
• ISO 639-3: bod
• Script: Tibt (Tibetan)
• Region: 001 (World)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 5,000,000
• L2 (additional): 1,000,000
• L1+L2 (total): 6,000,000

Regional variants

This is the base/macro locale for Tibetan. Region-specific variants in this dataset:

• Locale Bo Cn (Tibetan (China))

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: other (1 form).

• other — everything else (e.g. 0~15, 100, 1000, 10000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Tibetan (བོད་སྐད་) is written in the Tibetan script, an abugida that runs left to right. The written standard (Classical/Literary Tibetan) differs from the spoken Lhasa-based Standard Tibetan, and Tibetan has a rich honorific register. See Locale Bo Cn.

Translate ideas, not words.

• Write in the literary standard for formal texts and use colloquial forms only in informal content. Some modern terms are coined by calques from Chinese or by new compounds; use established terminology databases.
• Re-express idioms by meaning.

Grammar.

• Word order is subject-object-verb. Tibetan is ergative: the agent of a transitive verb takes the ergative particle. Case particles follow the noun.
• Honorific vocabulary: separate honorific words (ཞེ་ས) exist for body parts, actions, and possessions of respected people; use honorific forms for addressees of higher status, and plain forms for oneself.

Register.

• Use the honorific register for officials, teachers, and religious figures. In UI, use polite imperative forms and avoid curt commands.

Orthography and typography.

• Syllables are separated by the tsek (་) and sentences end with the shad (།); there are no spaces between words. Line breaking must happen at syllable boundaries.
• Use Unicode Tibetan (U+0F00 to U+0FFF) in normalized form; stacked consonants are built with subjoined characters, and wrong input order creates rendering errors.
• Tibetan digits (༠ to ༩) exist but Arabic digits are common in UI; Wylie transliteration is a scholarly convention, not a spelling system for users.

Common pitfalls

• Using Chinese word order or punctuation.
• Using spaces between words instead of the tsek.
• Using plain forms to address respected people.
• Using incorrect Unicode stacking order.

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Tibetan and Himalayan Library (https://www.thlib.org)
• Unicode Standard, Tibetan block