Tibetan at U of T

Tibetan belongs to Tibeto-Burman family of languages.
For over 1,000 years, Tibet has had great political, cultural, scientific, and economic importance in Asia, Eurasia, and now throughout the world. The region is critical for understanding interactions between South, Central, West, and East Asia in the past and the present.
The Tibetan cultural region covers large portions of China, India, Russia, some formerly Soviet states, Mongolia, and most of the Himalayan belt, including portions of Nepal, the entirety of Bhutan, and the former kingdoms of Ladakh, Sikkim, and Mustang.
Tibetans have had a highly scholastic culture for more than a millennium, with a voluminous corpus of literature on religion, history, philosophy, medicine, and other topics, and a rich body of art and architecture. Tibetans translated thousands of texts on various subjects from Central, South and East Asian regions, many of which are now the only surviving sources for understanding those regions and their histories.
Over 3,000 Tibetans now live in the Toronto area!

Visit the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion website for more information.
Consult the A&S calendar for specific course offerings.

There are study-abroad opportunities in India and in Tibet where you can immerse yourself in Tibetan communities.

Is it hard to learn Tibetan?
Tibetan is from the Tibeto-Burman language family, and so it is not related to English or any other European language. This means that structurally it is pretty different from what we are used to, and there are not many words shared with English. There are a lot of good resources to help you learn Tibetan, though, including audio and video recordings of Tibetans filmed in various parts of Tibet. And there are a lot of Tibetans in Toronto, so there is plenty of opportunity for practice.
Where can I use my Tibetan skills?
You can find Tibetans in Toronto to speak with and there are exile communities in many parts of North America and Europe. There are also study-abroad opportunities in India and in Tibet where you can immerse yourself in Tibetan communities. If you are interested in advanced study of Tibetan religion, philosophy, literature, history, or art, for example, Tibetan is essential for graduate studies in those areas.