Balti-English/English-Balti Dictionary

The Balti dialect of Tibetan is not one of those dialects such as Sikkimese and Tromowa (or Chumbi) that already have a dictionary or a glossary of its own. This may seem strange when one remembers that the Balti-speakers far outnumber the speakers of those other dialects. Furthermore, Balti is the westernmost of the Tibetan languages; it is spoken in what used to be Kashmir and has now become, since 1947, Pakistan (and the dialect could thus be called Pakistani Tibetan). This book is based on the Khapalu and Skardu dialects of Balti, a member of the Tibeto-Burman family, spoken in Baltistan, situated just south of the Karakoram Range. The work is distinguished by the phonetic acuity of its author, a recognised authority on phonetics in general as well as that of the Tibetan language family and the Balti dialect in particular. Such accuracy and detail in terms of phonetics, while desirable in any dictionary, is particularly important in the case of Balti, whose importance to the Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Tibetan comparatists at whom the work is expressly aimed is its close phonetic relationship to the Tibetan script. The Dictionary will be of use not only for language-learners, but also for those studying comparative linguistics and will undoubtedly become a standard work for the linguistics of the Tibetan language family in general.Sprigg, R. K. is the author of 'Balti-English/English-Balti Dictionary' with ISBN 9780700713806 and ISBN 0700713808.