Tibetan language

Lhasa Tibetan (Tibetan: ལྷ་སའི་སྐད་, Wylie: Lha-sa'i skad, THL: Lhaséké, ZYPY: Lasägä) or Standard Tibetan (Tibetan: བོད་སྐད་, Wylie: Bod skad, THL: Böké, ZYPY: Pögä, IPA: [pʰø̀k˭ɛʔ], or Tibetan: བོད་ཡིག་, Wylie: Bod yig, THL: Böyik, ZYPY: Pöyig) is the Tibetan dialect spoken by educated people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branched" classification of the Tibetic languages, the Lhasa dialect belongs to the Central Tibetan branch (the other two being Khams Tibetan and Amdo Tibetan). In terms of mutual intelligibility, speakers of Khams Tibetan are able to communicate at a basic level with Lhasa Tibetan, while Amdo speakers cannot. Both Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan evolved to become tonal and do not preserve the word-initial consonant clusters, which makes them very far from Classical Tibetan, especially when compared to the more conservative Amdo Tibetan.