How to Read Classical Tibetan ─ A Summary of the General Path

Do you want to learn to read Classical Tibetan? How to Read Classical Tibetan will show you—at your own pace—all the relationships that make Tibetan easy to read. It is a complete language course built around the exposition of a famous Tibetan text, Summary of the General Path to Buddhahood, written at the beginning of the fifteenth century. All the language tools you need to work at your own pace are in one place. You won't need a dictionary because all the words and particles are translated and explained upon every occurrence, and there is a complete glossary at the end of the book. Every sentence is diagrammed and completely explained so that you can easily see how the words and particles are arranged to convey meaning. Because everything is always explained in every sentence, you will easily learn to recognize the recurrent patterns making the transition from learning words to reading sentences much easier for you. As you study How to Read Classical Tibetan, you will learn to recognize the syntactic relationships you encounter, understand the meaning signified, and translate that meaning correctly into English.

Craig Preston studied at the University of Virginia and has taught Classical Tibetan at the Namgyal Institute and the University of Buffalo. He is the author of How to Read Classical Tibetan, Volume 1: A Summary of the General Path, and currently teaches Tibetan and Buddhist philosophy privately in Ithaca, New York.