Customer Reviews

Introduction to Classical Tibetan (Central Asian Studies)

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A blessedly slim, grammatically thorough & well-organized introductory text so elegant it can be used in classes or self-study. Beautifully printed, indexed, and designed. Introduction to Classical Tibetan by Stephen Hodge was assigned as a primary text at UC-Berkeley for beginning scriptural Tibetan. When first learning particles, I used to carry it with me everywhere. It's marvelously portable, and due to excellent indexing even a beginner can find specific grammatical items easily -- even when reading on the bus! When I advanced into higher classes, I kept Hodge in my backpack as a handy reference. It's still on my desktop today. If you are learning classical Tibetan independently, outside the university, this is a wonderful starter book.

Hodge's book is by far the finest that I've seen for beginners of Literary Tibetan. The manner in which he has arranged the text is ingenious. It is a small book, but I think you learn more from it than from Joe Wilson's hefty "Translating Buddhism from Tibetan." Also, it's very hard to find, in the first year Tibetan class I took, we couldn't get a hold of the text, so we all had to use photocopies. For colloquial Tibetan, I recommend the "Fluent Tibetan" series, but they are really no substitute for a class.

Self-study on Wilson's useful and honourable manual acquainted me with the basics of the Tibetan language, but before I got hold of this magic booklet I never felt, as I do now, that a real grasp of classical Tibetan was within my reach. Though I have never met him, I am grateful to Stephen Hodge for writing this book.