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The Tibetan alphabet: all 30 letters

Thirty consonants, each carrying a built-in “a”. Meet every letter of the Uchen script — its shape and its sound — in one place.

Every one of the 30 Tibetan consonants carries a built-in “a” sound — say ཀ on its own and it already sounds like “ka”. That single fact is the key to the whole script: learn the 30 shapes below, add the four vowel marks from the next lesson, and you can sound out almost any syllable in the language.

The traditional chart groups letters by where they’re made in the mouth — throat, palate, teeth, lips — moving row by row from the back of the mouth to the front. Tap through them below.

Next: the four vowel signs →