🚣♂️ Row 1
🏛️ Column 1
🙊 Non Aspirated
🔻 High Tone
ཀ Ka is purple because it's a non aspirated and high tone.
MNEMONIC
ཀ kinda looks like icicles doesn't it?
The four vowels
There are four vowels which can be attached to a consonant and they are:
༼ ཀ་ ཀི་ ཀུ་ ཀེ་ ཀོ་ ༽
Ka + vowels
Let's look at how the pronunciation
of ཀ changes with each vowel.
vowel Vocab
Here are some vocabulary
words with each vowel.
༼ རྐ་ ལྐ་ སྐ་ ༽
Superscripts
These letters go above the root letter.
ཀ can attach to all three superscripts.
Although they are spelled differently,
these letters are pronounced the same.
Stroke order
(Click for animations)
Rago
Lago
Sago
Superscript
Vocab
བོད་སྐད
The སྐ in བོད་སྐད changes
it's pronunciation
to སྐེ due to the suffix ད.
Here's a cool song where
you can hear བོད་སྐད.
༼ ཀྲ་ ཀྱ་ ཀླ་ ཀྭ་ ༽
Subscripts
These letters go below the root letter.
ཀ can attach to all four subscripts.
Subscripts usually change the sound
of the letter they are attached to.
See how rata, yata, and lata affect the
pronunciation, while wazur does not.
Stroke order
(Click for animations)
Rata
Yata
Lata
Wazur
Subscript
Vocab
བཀྲ་ཤིས
Although there is an R in Trashi,
the R is very subtle.
ཀྱི & ཀྱེ
When ཀྱ is attached to a gigu
or drengbu it will usually
retain the K sound.
ཀླདཔ
Notice how ཀླ in ཀླདཔ
is pronounced as le?
This is because it is suffixed by ད.
༼ དཀ་ བཀ་ ༽
Ka + Prefix
Prefixes are silent letters that
come before the root letter.
ཀ is usually prefixed by these letters:
Even though དཀ་ and བཀ་
look different than ཀ་,
they're all pronounced the same.
Prefix vocab
དཀྱི་ར
Kira
"Did you say Kira!?"
LOL
"Okay, well if women in Bhutan
wear kira, what do the men wear?"
Good question!
གོ
That's right!
Men in Bhutan wear གོ.
vocab builder
Here are some additional
vocabulary words that are
associated with the letter ཀ.
The key words in this video are:
ཀོ་པི & ཀེ་བ
See how many words we could
make from just two root words?
Did you notice how the ཀོབ་ in ཀོབ་ཆུང kinda sounds similar ཀོ་པི. I think the པ changed to བ because པ is not one of the original jenju, so in order to capture the final "p/b" consonant sound, we have to add བ as a suffix.
Practice
Now that we learned how
the letter ཀ works,
let's try writing it in the
Uchen, Jotshum, and Ume script.
Uchen
(Dzongkha & Tibetan)
ཀ་ ཀི་ ཀུ་ ཀེ་ ཀོ་
རྐ་ ལྐ་ སྐ་
ཀྲ་ ཀྱ་ ཀླ་ ཀྭ་
Jotshum
(Dzongkha)
ཀ་ ཀི་་ ཀུ་ ཀེ་ ཀོ་
རྐ་ ལྐ་ སྐ་
ཀྲ་ ཀྱ་ ཀླ་ ཀྭ་
Ume
(Tibetan)
ཀ་ ཀི་ ཀུ་ ཀེ་ ཀོ་
རྐ་ ལྐ་ སྐ་
ཀྲ་ ཀྱ་ ཀླ་ ཀྭ་
༼༺࿉༻༽
This is everything you need to know about the letter ཀ.
Make sure that as you practice your
handwriting with the resources
above so that you can impress
everyone with your Dzongkha skills.
(╮°-°)╮┳━━┳
Don't forget!
Spelling in Dzongkha is incredibly important and considered by many to be one of the hardest parts about learning the language. When studying, try to make it a habit to spell the words aloud like we did in the videos.
Quiz time!
Literally the two words that
no one enjoys hearing.
Don't worry, we prepared some
flashcards for you to practice
what you learned in this lesson.
( ╯°□°)╯ ┻━━┻
Relax, its not graded,
but if you don't score well..
If you have any questions regarding anything in this lesson, please reach out to me on Instagram.
See you in the next lesson!
