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ʼPhags-pa

Babelstone

Consonants

The order reflects the traditional order of the letters of the Tibetan script, to which they correspond. As is the case with Tibetan and other Brahmic scripts, consonants have an inherent [a] vowel sound attached to them in non-final positions when no other vowel sign is present (e.g. the letterka with no attached vowel represents the syllable ka, but with an appended vowel i represents the syllable ki).

There are a few extra consonants used to represent sounds not found in Tibetan. These are either derived from other Tibetan base consonants or formed by combining an base consonant a with the semi-vowel letter WA. For example, ⟨ꡣ⟩ xa is derived from Tibetan ⟨ཁྭ⟩ khwa.

ཀ ka ꡀ IPA: /ka/	ཁ kha ꡁ IPA: /kʰa/	ག ga ꡂ IPA: /ɡa/	ང nga ꡃ IPA: /ŋa/	ཅ ca ꡄ IPA: /tʃa/	ཆ cha ꡅ IPA: /tʃʰa/	ཇ ja ꡆ IPA: /dʒa/	ཉ nya ꡇ IPA: /ɲa/
ཏ ta ꡈ IPA: /ta/	ཐ tha ꡉ IPA: /tʰa/	ད da ꡊ IPA: /da/	ན na ꡋ IPA: /na/	པ pa ꡌ IPA: /pa/	ཕ pha ꡍ IPA: /pʰa/	བ ba ꡎ IPA: /ba/	མ ma ꡏ IPA: /ma/
ཙ tsa ꡐ IPA: /tsa/	ཚ tsha ꡑ IPA: /tsʰa/	ཛ dza ꡒ IPA: /dza/	ཝ wa ꡓ IPA: /wa/	ཞ zha ꡔ IPA: /ʒa/	ཟ za ꡕ IPA: /z/	འ 'a ꡖ IPA: /'a/
ཡ ya ꡗ IPA: /ja/	ར ra ꡘ IPA: /ra/	ལ la ꡙ IPA: /la/	ཤ sha ꡚ IPA: /ʃa/	ས sa ꡛ IPA: /sa/	ཧ ha ꡜ IPA: /ha/	ཨ ʼa ꡝ IPA: /ha/
ཁ qa ꡢ	ཁྭ xa ꡣ	ཧྭ fa ꡤ	ག gga ꡥ	ཊ tta ꡩ	ཋ ttha ꡪ	ཌ dda ꡫ	ཎ nna ꡬ

◌ྭ wa ◌ꡧ	ྱ ya ◌ꡨ	ྲ ra ◌ꡱ subjoined	ར ra ꡲ◌ superfixed	◌ྃ ꡳ◌ candrabindu
ꡀꡧ kwa	ꡀꡨ kya	ꡀꡱ kra	ꡲꡀ rka	ꡳꡀ ka

Vowels

Initial semi-vowels, diphthongs and digraphs must be attached to the null base consonant. As there is no sign for the vowel a, which is implicit in an initial base consonant with no attached vowel sign, words that start with an a vowel must begin with a null base consonant letter. In Chinese, and rarely Mongolian, another null base consonant, ⟨ꡐ⟩, -a, may be found before initial vowels.

One difference from the Tibetan script, in which a vowel must always be attached to a base consonant, is that in ʼPhags-pa, an initial vowel other than a can appear without a base consonant when it is not the first element in a diphthong or a digraph. ⟨◌ꡦ⟩, ee represents a vowel that does not occur in Tibetan, and may be derived from the Tibetan vowel sign ⟨ ཻ⟩. It is never found in an initial position.

Vowels and example syllables with null consonant ⟨ꡝ⟩ and with ⟨ꡀ⟩, k.

◌ꡞ ི	◌ꡟ ུ	◌ꡠ ེ	◌ꡡ ོ	◌ꡦ ཻ
ꡝꡞ i	ꡝꡟ u	ꡝꡠ e	ꡝꡡ o	ꡝꡦ ee
ꡀꡞ ki	ꡀꡟ ku	ꡀꡠ ke	ꡀꡡ ko	ꡀꡦ kee

Shilin Guangji

During the Yuan dynasty, Chen Yuanjing employed ʼPhagspa as a kind of precursor to modern pinyin, using it to annotate the Chinese text of his encyclopedia, the Shilin Guangji, (simplified Chinese: 事林广记; traditional Chinese: 事林廣記, Phags-pa: ꡎꡗ ꡂꡨ ꡛꡞꡃ). His transcriptions include the Hundred family surnames (Chinese: 百家姓).

Some of the Hundred Family Surnames

cew ꡄꡠꡓ	dzen ꡒꡠꡋ	sun ꡛꡟꡋ	li ꡙꡞ	jiw ꡆꡞꡓ	u ꡟ	cing ꡄꡞꡃ	wang ꡝꡧꡃ	fung ꡤꡟꡃ	cin ꡄꡞꡋ
趙 zhào	錢 qián	孫 sūn	李 lǐ	周 zhōu	吳 wú	鄭 zhèng	王 wáng	馮 féng	陳 chén