Sino-Tibetan · ISO 639-3 bod · bo
Tibetan Language བོད་ཡིག
Tibetan is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 2.8 million people in 3 countries. It is written in the Tibetan and Latin scripts.
Where Tibetan is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Tibetan
Language family
- Sino-Tibetan
- Bodic
- Bodish
- Early Old Tibetan
- Middle Old Tibetan
- Late Old Tibetan
- Central Tibetan
- Tibetan
Writing system
Tibetan and Latin scripts
Related languages
About the Tibetan language
Tibetan (བོད་ཡིག) is spoken by about 2.8 million people, which makes it the 261st most spoken language in the world — just behind Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (2.8 million) and ahead of Fanti (2.8 million). It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and, more precisely, to the Central Tibetan group within the Bodish branch.
Where is Tibetan spoken?
Tibetan is used in 3 countries. The largest communities live in China (2.8 million), India (155,004) and Nepal (74,693).
Share of the population that speaks Tibetan: China 0.2% (2.8 million), India <0.1% (155,004) and Nepal 0.2% (74,693).
Tibetan is not a national official language anywhere. It also has regional official status in China.
Writing system and status
Tibetan is written in the Tibetan and Latin scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Tichurong, Khams Tibetan, Dzongkha and Amdo Tibetan.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 bo, ISO 639-3 bod.
Frequently asked questions about Tibetan
How many people speak Tibetan?
Where is Tibetan spoken?
What language family does Tibetan belong to?
What is Tibetan called in Tibetan?
Is Tibetan an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.