Re: Tibetan

[RSRICHMOND@xxxxxxx]

Tibetan has a strongly historical orthography! Sinicists apparently believe 
that the tongue-boggling consonant clusters fore and aft a lone vowel were 
originally pronounced, and that primary tone arose as clusters became simpler 
(in somewhat the same way that phonemic vowel length is arising in English 
with loss of final clusters, so that the vowel of /he:p/ 'help' may contrast 
with /step/). - But none of the Tibetan consonants are tone markers - I don't 
think the orthography marks tone, which I believe bears some but not very 
much contrast load in contemporary Tibetan.
I believe that the use of final consonants to mark tone in Romanizations is a 
20th century invention - Mary Haas used it for Burmese in the 1940's, Smalley 
for Hmong in the '50's. 

Bob Richmond
Knoxville TN