Khams Tibetan

Khams Tibetan (Tibetan: ཁམས་སྐད, Wylie: Khams skad, THL: Khamké, Lhasa dialect: [kʰam˥˨ kɛː˥˨], Khams Tibetan pronunciation: [kʰɑ̃ː˥˧ kɛˀˑ] (Dêgê dialect)) is the Tibetic language spoken by the majority of the people in Kham. Khams is one of the three branches of the traditional classification of Tibetic languages (the other two being Amdo Tibetan and "Central" or Ü-Tsang Tibetan). In terms of mutual intelligibility, Khams can communicate at a basic level with the Ü-Tsang branch (including Lhasa Tibetan).

Both Khams Tibetan and Lhasa Tibetan have lost the word-initial consonant clusters of Old Tibetan, which makes them very different from Old Tibetan, as well as from the more conservative Amdo Tibetan. Both Khams and Lhasa Tibetan have also become tonal, which Old Tibetan was not. Khams Tibetan shows 80% lexical similarity with Central (e.g., Lhasa) Tibetan.

From Wikipedia · Khams Tibetan · CC BY-SA 4.0