Search recommendations

The key terms (lemmata) can be retrieved both in Tibetan script and in transliteration. In addition, all terms that occur within an article linked to a lemma are searchable. This may be used, for example, to find Tibetan equivalents to Western medical terms. In order to obtain a good search result, it is recommended to take the following hints into account:

A particularly reliable search result can be achieved if the query is performed along the transliteration system of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. It differs from the transcription attributed to Turrell Wylie in the transliteration of the consonants va-chung (འ) and xa-chen (ཨ). This provides reliable traceability to all the Tibetan letters and is useful for word segmentation and the various possibilities of truncation. But all keywords can also be found in "Wylie transliteration", if only on the basis of syllables.

The most elementary search possibility is based on the syllables of the script as it is commonly used to write down the Tibetan language. In order to find terms consisting of a particular sequence of syllables it is recommended to simply combine and write together as words two or up to three syllables, if the resulting sequence forms an established lexical term:

dkar po                      finds all records containing dkar (དཀར) or po (པོ)
dkarpo                       finds all lexemes dkar-po (དཀར་པོ)

It is possible to enclose any character string in quotation marks:

"dkar po"                   finds the syllable dkar (དཀར) followed by po (པོ)
"bongnga dkarpo"     finds the word bong-nga (བོང་ང) followed by dkar-po (དཀར་པོ)

A so-called truncated query proves to be particularly helpful by using the asterisk (*) as placeholder or wildcard character. The following examples may illustrate this:

bongbu                      finds the term bong-bu (བོང་བུ)
bongbu*                    will also find bong-buvi (བོང་བུའི)
bongn*                      will find bong-nag (བོང་ནག) and bong-nga (བོང་ང)

You can also place the wildcard (*) at the beginning of a word or syllable:

*oxides                      finds oxides and also hydroxides and ironhydroxides
*go                            will find go (གོ), dgo (དགོ), vgo (འགོ) and sngo (སྔོ)