BREATHING SPACE: How Word Separation Can Save the Tibetan Language (1)

The Tibetan language, like an asthma patient in a dust storm, is gasping for breath. Although Tibetan children born and raised in locations as geographically disparate as Lhasa, Dharamsala or New York may grow up speaking Tibetan as a first language, they’ll almost certainly write it as a second. As long as Tibet remains a colony of China, this will not change. For Tibetan students inside Tibet, the language of professional success is now Chinese. For Tibetan students outside, it’s English. Disadvantaged by the system, Tibetan is inevitably neglected.

For the fate of Tibetan as a spoken language, the result of this neglect is so far minimal: as the language of home and hearth, it surrounds us in infancy and we grow up speaking Tibetan as our mother tongue. For Tibetan as a writing system, however, the result of this neglect is devastating: Tibetans of our generation do almost all of our reading and writing in a foreign language and almost none in Tibetan.

When young Tibetans trained outside the monastic system – who constitute the majority – cannot write a decent letter in Tibetan or read a sentence without tripping over at least three words, we have a crisis at hand. What’s to be done?

The root of the problem is quite simple: we cannot write Tibetan well because we almost never read Tibetan, and we almost never read Tibetan because it is so difficult to read it. And there’s one very simple way to immediately ease the difficulty of reading Tibetan: word separation. Adding a space between words so that we can see each word as an immediate discrete unit having visual meaning will simplify the daunting task of reading Tibetan script overnight.

In fact, this is what people throughout the world have been doing with other writing systems. Ancient Greek and Latin were written in scriptura continua, which is continuous script without spaces between words. Paul Saenger, the distinguished scholar of medieval writing practices, asserts that it was only at the end of the seventh century that Irish monks began to introduce spaces between words into medieval manuscripts, and it took several centuries for this practice to be adopted as standard. (Paul Saenger argues that it was this “aerated” script that led to the development of silent reading as we know it.) This space between words, also called whitespace, is now ubiquitous across many writing systems. Even Hindi, previously written in continuous Devanagari script (the base from which Thonmi Sambhota devised the Tibetan alphabet and writing system) is now spaced. Korea’s Hangul, previously continuous, is now generally spaced. Ethiopic, which like Tibetan uses the interpunct, the dot – although they double it, like so (:)- is increasingly written with a space between words.

Actually, writing Tibetan as we currently do, with the single dot to differentiate between syllables and no space between words, is a faithful representation of speech: after all in speech, we pause not between words but only at the end of a sentence. However, for the reader, that space – the visual equivalent of a pause – makes a world of difference: the whitespace allows words to be discrete, to have meaning that can be accessed visually as well as aurally. The eye can see quicker than the ear can hear and reading comprehension is consequently faster and simpler. Because Tibetan does not use word dividers, textual meaning is harder to access and the writing encourages the reader to read aloud rather than silently. In Space Between Words, Paul Saenger contends, “In general, graphic systems that eliminate or reduce the need for a cognitive process prior to lexical access facilitate the early adaptation of young readers to silent reading, while written languages that are more ambiguous necessitate the oral manipulation of phonetic components to construct words.” Tibetan of course falls into the latter category. He continues, “These latter writing systems require a longer training period, one that features oral reading and rote memorization and that continues, in some instances, even into adulthood.”

Continued-

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa: Poetry Reading at the Rubin Museum of Art

There was a poetry reading at the Rubin Museum of Art today. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa read from Rules of the House, In the Absent Everyday and from her new book which is not out yet. I had the books and had read the poems, so hearing her read was like hearing a sweet old song that I haven’t heard in a while.

I feel like her poetry is more diasporic than exilic – which is perhaps another way of saying that it is more cultural than political- but it is so moving. It feels familiar and yet remarkable: she touches on familiar themes, ideas, and images but by remarking on them with her clear far-seeing eyes and gorgeous voices, she makes them remarkable. This is from Bardo, a poem to a dead uncle or as she calls him, “Uncle who is no more.” “You are dead, go into life, we pray.” How beautiful, how non-sentimental and fitting.

It is hard to pick a favorite but I particularly love this one.

Hill Station passages

Transparent, the town smeared itself around nightfall. House lights

attempted star life.

There were no rooms on Main Street. No roads bifurcating

from it.

A stranger’s town can make you shy. Dogs barked at our heels.

Avuncular and in their own way, marking every entry.

Here is someone else’s place of origin.

Dust in the morning – eager-eyed grit. Amber grass.

People spilled on to the streets like red ants driven out of hiding.

Light removed all images of the night. What was visible was

not recognizable.

The language is startling. The images are old images made completely new. The verbs she chooses, the way she sees and expresses ideas, makes all the difference in the first lines. “The town smeared itself around nightfall.” How surprising, and yet how true. This is what a town in a fog looks like at night, a smear against, around the dark. A lesser poet might have said “House lights looked like stars” or “House lights imitated stars”- Dhompa says, “House lights attempted star life.” When she says, “Here is someone else’s place of origin,” there is so much story there- both the speaker’s and that actual someone else’s. The only line I don’t like is the next one; I find the image of people spilling out like red ants jarring, incongruous, but the rest of the poem with its detached wisdom and small surprises (like “eager-eyed grit”) is perfect.

How We Were Haunted

How We Were Haunted (Part 1)

Bardo is the interworld: Every Tibetan child knows this. It’s the forty nine days between the death of one body and the birth of the next, when the soul is untethered -housed in the womb of the universe- ready to birth at any opportune moment as any sentient thing – a man, a fly, a horse. So essentially, you can see bardo as life’s backyard, or lobby, as this time-space continuum wherein a soul hangs out, has a few sangrias before putting its cigarette out and rejoining the party. And every so often, an unhappy soul dissatisfied with bardo, will wreak destruction. Being unhampered by a body, a soul is free from the laws of nature, from constraints on its movement, restraints on its power.

All of which is to say, I spent much of my childhood being terrified out of my mind. This is an exaggeration on some level, because my childhood was a relatively happy one. However, it is true that, every night when darkness fell, if I was alone, I grew afraid. We were all afraid. Not only of mundane things like sadu babas, child-snatchers and bridge-builders. We were afraid of old witch-women, churels with hollow backs, people with faces without features, we were afraid of shadows in the window and footsteps in the dark.

We were conditioned to this fear of course. By our elders who were themselves afraid of the dark and all it hid, by older kids who told us not to go to the toilets at night, and by stories endlessly passed around about pyre fires that would not go out, dead people who have returned to claim an object they left behind, men and women who have walked when they have no business to.

This childhood fear; it was unspecific, and it was as large and amorphous as the dark itself. Sometimes I wonder what the psychic cost of this bucket load of childhood fear is. Fear is friction, isn’t it? It wears the mind. And of course, it freezes the brain, shrinks it, reduces the contours of consciousness until all you are aware of is the weight of fear itself, an unbearable weight heavy and dull like a dead pond frog rested on the brain.

The (Tibetan) Art of Official Correspondence

Latse Library on Perry Street is currently hosting an exhibition titled “Postmarked Lhasa: An Exhibit of Tibetan Stamps and Correspondence.” I went to the launch of this exhibition on the Saturday before last, on November 7. The program that day included two speakers Geoffrey Flack, who spoke on the postal history of Tibet, and Shewo Lobsang Dhargyel, who spoke on official correspondence, who were both simply excellent.

On Geoffrey Flack, a stamps dealer and Vice President of the Nepal and Tibet Philatelic Study Guide, and an expert on Tibetan stamps and postal history, and his important presentation, more another time.

Shewo Lobsang Dhargyel, whose lecture was entitled “The Art of Official Correspondence”, gave a rare example of a talk by a shungshab that started off on point, stayed on point and ended on point. He started off in the traditional manner, thanking his host and insisting that he wasn’t an expert and he didn’t really know much about official correspondence at all but since Pema Bhum asked him to come and speak, he has come. Normally when a speaker starts off this way, I itch with impatience but that day, perhaps because Lobsang Dhargyel was such an impressive speaker, I appreciated that this very customary opening is one way of respecting the audience. (Of course, another way of respecting the audience, and one seemingly unfamiliar to most Tibetan officials, is to begin on time and end on time and stay on topic.)

After that brief intro, Shewo Lobsang Dhargyel then launched into the body of his lecture and it was fascinating. He talked about the protocol and etiquette of official letter writing of the Tibetan government (specifically the Ganden Phodrang government which had ruled Tibet from the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the sixteenth century till 1959 when the invading Chinese dissolved it). The protocol governing letter writing is mind-boggling.  There were exacting standards dictating details from the kind of script to the color of ink to the type of paper used, to the given amount of header and footer space on each page, to the way the letter is folded and string is tied around it.

According to Lobsang Dhargyel la, Tibetan official correspondence was divided into two main categories which were further divided into four subgroups each. The two man categories were Edicts and Reports, i.e. correspondence that was sent by the Government and correspondence that was sent to the Government. Edicts can include orders and proclamations while Reports can include appeals and proposals made to the various elements of government.

The subdivision of Edicts looked like this: 1. Edicts from His Holiness 2. Edicts from the Regent 3. Edicts from the Prime Minister 4. Edicts from the Cabinet. Consequently, the subdivision of Reports follows the same categorization: Reports to His Holiness 2. Reports to the Regent 3. Reports to the Prime Minister 4. Reports to the Cabinet.

Basically everything that could be thought of was thought of and then standardized. And this standardization was extreme and precise, and of the sort that could only be carried out by a fully functioning government that reached into all sectors of literate society. Bear in mind that in sixteenth century England, spelling and punctuation were not yet standardized. So the Tibetan standardization of the form of official correspondence, built on the standardization of spelling, punctuation and syntax carried out in the 7^th/8^th century, was an admirable achievement.

The system of official correspondence is important as a piece of history and as corresponding detail supplementing other evidence of the existence of a fully functioning Tibetan government based in Lhasa distinct from the Chinese government in Peking. After all, detail honors reality by making reality more real.

In “How Fiction Works,” (a brilliant book of revelations) critic James Wood says, “…in life as in literature, we navigate via the stars of detail… We snag on it.” He explains this detail as detail “that draws abstraction toward itself and seems to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability”, and “centers our attention with its concretion”. The protocol and etiquette governing Tibetan government correspondence carries out that same task – it “centers our attention with its concretion” and convinces us of the integrity, and historicity, and existence, of such a government. 

Lamp Map of Tibet from SFT's Art Auction

At SFT's Art Auction held sometime ago, in Chinatown of all places, there were several pieces of art that pulled at my heart. One that was very very cool and creative was Tenzin Mochoe's piece: a sculpture of a map of Tibet made up of little wax candles. Mochoe described the piece as a melding together of the political and the religious- the map of Tibet with the candles symbolizing butter lamps that we light in temples; and he stressed that with the lighting of the lamps, the act of creation, of making the map come alive with fire, simultaneously becomes an act of destruction- as the candles light, the wax melts and the map blurs.

I thought this was brilliant. A map of Tibet is always highly political, especially a map of Tibet as we conceive it, with borders around the three historical provinces of Tibet and the plateau itself as one political entity (just as it is one geological unit). Here, this map, the highly political and usually secular entity, becomes spiritual and sacred. And how does it become sacred? Not by sitting there as a piece of art, but because people -the audience- light the candles as an offering, which act, when you think about it, is really the performance of a wish fulfulling ritual. You make the wish, and you light the lamp to mark its making. With the lighting of the lamps made of candles, you are complicit in the creation and the destruction and the sanctification of this map of Tibet made of lamps.

Thanking His Holiness

I had a chance at Garrison Institute in upstate New York to thank His Holiness. This was in front of a hundred Tibetan professionals who had gathered there for the three-day Tibetan Professionals' Conference. The Conference itself was crazy and inspiring and very very hectic for Tsewang la and me. But more on the conference later. For me, of course, the moment that stands out is when I got to thank His Holiness. I was to thank him for being there. But of course I had to thank His Holiness for so much more than that. Obviously we owe His Holiness everything- the strength of our identity, the unity of our people, our image, our platform, our place in the world. Displaced as we are, we are not invisible and that is because of His Holiness. Anyway this is my thank you note, or address, or whatever that I read in front of His Holiness and the audience of Tibetan professionals at Garrison Institute, Monday, October 5.

Tashi Delek, Your Holiness, and good afternoon to all. On behalf of the Office of Tibet, I would like to once again thank all the participants and speakers for being here and Garrison Institute for providing us with this wonderful space.

On behalf of all the Tibetans, and all the youth and professionals gathered here, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Your Holiness for meeting with us in spite of your most hectic schedule.

In the past fifty years, we were forced to cross the highest mountains to go into exile, and from that exile we crossed oceans to go into an even further exile. We live on other nations’ charity, on other people’s good will and conscience, but we have dignity and we have strength because when we lift our gaze up, we see you.

Many of us here in this room are more fortunate and privileged than most of our countrymen. We believe that there is no further exile. From here on, every step must be a step home. Our parents’ generation suffered and sacrificed for the cause of our nation. I assure Your Holiness that we will continue to do the same, with courage and resilience, to realize the vision of a Tibet where Tibetans can live in peace and prosperity and freedom. Thank you.

The Chinese Empire...State Building?!

60 years ago yesterday, Chairman Mao chased Chiang Kaishek off the Middle Kingdom, surveyed his fiefdom of Long March survivors, youthful yet-to-be-disillusioned Communists and a war-weary people, and proclaimed the People's Republic of China. After that, Mao and his Army proceeded to invade and occupy Tibet, East Turkestan, Inner Mongolia. That wasn't all. He also launched a drastic social and agricultural experiment called the Great Leap Forward which caused large-scale famine across China (and of course across Tibet and the other occupied territories) and killed tens of millions of people. Then of course he jump started the Cultural Revolution - not for ideological reasons as some people may like to think but because of petty power struggles with his comrades Liu Shaoqi and others in the Politburo. Now Mao is dead but his totalitarian regime lives marching on. 

Yesterday, in an astoundingly stupid move, the owners and managers of the Empire State Building in New York -W and H Properties- lit the building red and yellow in celebration of the 60 Year Anniversary of the founding of the PRC. What were they thinking? Not only is it immoral and shameful to honor a government and a state that jails, tortures and kills people for expressing dissent, but it's unbelievably bad public relations. 

Of course we came out to protest. And of course, in today's papers, every mention of the Empire State Building's cloaking itself in red bloody light emphasized the protests and the Tibetan reaction. 

So really- for us? Win-win. The Empire State Building selling its soul gave the Tibetans a platform to protest the anniversary of the Politburo's Republik of China.