Module talk:bo-pron

Thanks for adding the Old Tibetan. We still have a separate code for it, by the way (otb) — AFAICT, it's different enough to merit handling separately, but similar enough that we could handle it with the rest of Tibetan. Currently it looks like we're just ignoring it. Also, a minor thing, but might "reconstructed" be a better word to use than "theoretical"? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:50, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree - Old Tibetan is similar enough to be mergeable. I used "theoretical" since it is ambiguous enough to cover both the fact that it is reconstructed, and that some words may not be attested in Old Tibetan. Maybe the Old Tibetan should be disabled if it is not attested, but I feel like some people may find the pronunciation useful. Wyang (talk) 08:02, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, we definitely don't want Old Tibetan pronunciations for modern loans from Mandarin! Probably best to allow it to be disabled, at least for those. Also, I guess I'll go ahead and merge Old Tibetan, since it was overlooked in previous discussions. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:38, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Yup, I've gone through Category:Tibetan terms derived from other languages and disabled these. Thanks for merging it in the module - could you also remove otb from Module:languages/data3/x please? It's causing some errors in Cat:E since {{inh|bo|sit-pro|*...}} can't be recognised. Thanks! Wyang (talk) 08:58, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Per the recent Beer Parlour discussion, I have unmerged Old Tibetan. It isn’t that similar orthographically, and in any event is very useful for etymologies. Theknightwho (talk) 20:09, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Replacing obselete/deprecated syntax...(Protected edit request)

			"\n** [[w:Tibetan pinyin|Tibetan pinyin]]: <span class=\"tr\"><tt>" .. export.tidyRom(table.concat(p, ", ")) .. "</tt></span>" ..

should be updated to

			"\n** [[w:Tibetan pinyin|Tibetan pinyin]]: <span style="font-family:monospace;" class=\"tr\">" .. export.tidyRom(table.concat(p, ", ")) .. "</span>" ..

This will eliminate a lot of "Obselete tag" LintErrors. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:23, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00 Done. — فين أخاي ^{(تكلم معاي · ما ساهمت)} 01:28, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to Migrate this Module to a More Sensible, Sensitive, Practical Input Language Than CCP “Tibetan Pinyin”

བཀྲིས་བདེ་ལེགས།

I am a third year (i.e. “advanced”) translation student of Lhasa Colloquial and Literary Tibetan at Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator School in Dharamsala (part of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, or FPMT, founded by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche), and I am also a software developer with over 20 years experience.

I noticed that this pronunciation module only accepts input as “Tibetan Pinyin”, which is frankly nothing but political technology of the CCP in linguistic form to effect their ongoing genocide of the Tibetan people and the Chinese regime’s project for the erasure/assimilation of Tibetan language and culture and its transformation into regime-sanctioned tourist entertainment.

The use of TP may be appropriate for zh.wiktionary.org, but in my opinion, here at wiktionary.org, not only is its use completely insensitive and counter to the free and open ethos of this project given the nature/origin and use of TP, it makes little practical sense to use it. Wylie, despite its well-highlighted shortcomings, remains the dominant transliteration system among the English-speaking Tibetan language community (it is also what is used in mine and many other Tibetan language programs run by the Tibetan exile community and English-language Tibetan textbooks)—indeed, Wylie is used here on wiktionary.org as the transliteration scheme for all lemmas/entries, as well as in translation tables. Vanishingly few serious students of Tibetan language who would be editors here on English Wikipedia use TP, compared to Wylie or other systems (e.g. THL simplified phonetic/Tournadre, Bialek, etc). As far as I know, TP is incapable of transliterating terms of Sanskrit origin used in Tibetan as well. TP doesn’t even show up in the rendered module output, so all that its use here does is force editors who care about the future of Tibet and the Tibetan people and language to use the tool of their oppressors. For all of these reasons, I can’t even imagine why TP was chosen as the input language for this module in the first place.

Moreover, since Wiktionary already transliterates Tibetan terms to Wylie, this module could be rewritten to simply accept Tibetan Unicode (i.e the lemma itself could be the input, with no arguments required), and the Wylie transliteration thereof could be used to generate the IPA transcriptions in the pronunciation table. There is already ample extant work in the public domain regarding the conversion of Tibetan Unicode and Wylie to phonetic transcriptions. The use of TP to present Tibetan culture and language here on English Wikipedia is unnecessary at best—every time an editor is forced to write a Tibetan word in TP, it is a tacit approval of the genocidal policy of the Chinese occupiers. And with the CCP’s current 5- to 10-year demographic/economic/political outlook, it would probably be a good idea anyway to future-proof the infrastructure here and migrate to a system that won’t pass into oblivion with its inept and corrupt creators.

I introduced myself with my “credentials”, because given my background, I would be capable of realizing this proposal by myself, but I believe a discussion is in order before making such a change—this is a community project, after all—so please let me know what you think!

ངའི་བསམ་འཆར་འདི་བསམ་ཞིབ་བྱས་པར་ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཆེ་གནང་།

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 18:40, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Just needed to add to this that because this module was created based on CCP Tibetan Pinyin, besides for the issues I mentioned above, it is woefully inadequate for transcribing IPA—which is its entire purpose. CCP Tibetan Pinyin exists for one purpose alone—to transcribe Tibetan into sounds that the Han Chinese can understand and pronounce in Han Chinese. It has nothing at all to do with IPA or pronunciation for an international audience.

As such, it conflates and/or excludes many Tibetan sounds/letters, most notably the set of consonants that have a voiced, unaspirated pronunciation when combined with a prefix letter or a head letter: /g/ (དག, བག, མག, འག, རྒ, ལྒ, སྒ), /ɟ/ (དགྱ, བགྱ, བགྱ, མགྱ, འགྱ, རྒྱ, སྒྱ, བརྒྱ, བསྒྱ), /ɖ ~ ɖ͡ʐ/ (དགྲ, བགྲ, མགྲ, འགྲ, རྒྲ, སྒྲ, བསྒྲ, བདྲ, འདྲ, དབྲ, འབྲ, སྦྲ, བསྒྲ), /dʑ/ (མཇ, འཇ, རྗ, ལྗ, བརྗ), /d/ (གད, བད, མད, འད, རྡ, ལྡ, སྡ, བརྡ, བལྡ, བསྡ, འརྡ, འསྡ), /b/ (དབ, འབ, རྦ, ལྦ, སྦ, འརྦ), and /dz/ (བཛ, མཛ, འཛ, རྫ, བརྫ)—a lot of sounds, representing many words. Because of this, any entry using {{bo-pron}} cannot represent any of these IPA sounds.

Additionally, because of the decision to use CCP Tibetan Pinyin, any editor wishing to add IPA transcriptions for Tibetan words cannot use the sensible and common codes for many sounds, for example "sh", internationally used for Tibetan ཤ (/ɕ/ with a high tone), because CCP pinyin spelling reserves "sh" for the exceedingly rare Tibetan combination ཧྲ (/ʂ/).

All in all, this represents a disastrous state of affairs for the accurate representation of Tibetan language in IPA here on en.wiktionary.org (unless you want to learn how to pronounce Tibetan as a Han person trying to speak Tibetan), besides being downright offensive and insensitive. I am not entirely sure what can be done to amend this situation at this point, though, because so many entries have already been created with this template, using CCP Tibetan Pinyin-based pronunciation codes, so it isn't as if one could just go and swap all of the mappings to a more sensible, less insensitive system, without resulting in gibberish for all of the extant entries. And I'm not sure it would be possible to perform the remappings first, and then write a script to automatically correct/update the transcription codes in existing entries, because the process/mappings may not be as easily reversible.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 11:50, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Hermes Thrice Great I strongly suggest you (re-)post this at WT:BP, where you're much more likely to get a response. We don't tend to use talk pages, as the community is too small to monitor them for millons of entries. Theknightwho (talk) 12:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Theknightwho Yes, thank you—I will collect my thoughts here into a more succinct and less polemical form, focusing mostly on the inadequacies of CCP Tibetan Pinyin for transcribing and ultimately representing Tibetan sounds in IPA for an international and English-speaking audience here on en.wiktionary.org, and then post to the Beer Parlour.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 08:06, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Hermes Thrice Great, Theknightwho The Module for Tibetan Pronunciation has been at the Chinese Edition of Wiktionary mostly updated. --Apisite (talk) 07:13, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Apisite Ok, I see that you have mirrored my addition of /ɟ/, as well as corrected some of the tone markers—thank you for that—but for zh.wiktionary.org, I think the overall use of Tibetan Pinyin is completely reasonable and expected (at least until such time as Tibet is free once again, or the current government in China ceases to exist as such). My comments here, along with my wish to improve {{Module:bo-pron}} apply largely to en.wiktionary.org, where my efforts are focused, and for which I think its use is altogether inadequate and borders on complicit/offensive. I also think my comments here could apply to other language versions of Wiktionary that aren't zh.wiktionary.org.

If, after a successful discussion at WT:BP, we decide to revamp this module here on en.wiktionary.org, I would most definitely not expect the changes to be mirrored over at zh.wiktionary.org.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 08:30, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Hermes Thrice Great, Theknightwho On the five-and-twentieth Anniversary of the Falun Gong Practitioners' peaceful Appeal to the CCP Government, no less. --Apisite (talk) 07:15, 25 April 2024 (UTC)