Introduction

‘Standard Tibetan’ is the result of a state-building project of the Tibetan Empire. Tradition says that the Tibetan Emperor, Srongbtsan sGampo, sent one of his ministers, Tonmi Sambhoṭa, to India in the seventh century CE. It's reported that, when he came back, he created a script for Tibetan, and wrote several grammars (Tournadre, 2010). In each of the three following centuries, special councils updated the written language (Hill, 2015). This medieval variety of Central Tibetan was the language of literacy and learning, and of Buddhist scripture and liturgy; as such, it had institutional support across the Tibetan Empire. These works still define ‘proper’ Tibetan to this day.

While this historical variety of Central Tibetan has been prescriptively maintained in writing, the modern spoken languages of that region have naturally diverged over the span of the last thousand years. Standards in speech change informally and organically: Speakers adapt, adopt, interact, and innovate. New words get added, old words are subtracted, syntax drifts, and pronunciations shift. Such changes are natural responses to migration, movement, and mixture; as such, they are also especially apparent in the emerging ‘standard speech’ of the Himalayan settlements and greater Tibetan diaspora.

The result is diglossia – two horns of a dilemma, two competing standards, two diverging roads between which the borders grow ever taller and thicker.