I was investigating if the tone only exists on the first syllable as said in Manual of Standard Tibetan. I made monks record a sentence to check if I could appreciate this phenomena but I struggled to do it, because the sentence I gave might have been long.
Experiment
I will present the results from the experiment Gen Alexandra at SINI told me about the tones on syllables that are not the first.
I am asking Tibetans to send me voice notes saying ངའི་ནང་ལ་ཕེབས་རོགས་གནང་། and ང་ཚོས་ བོད་ལ་ གནས་མཇལ་ལ་ འགྲོ་དུས་ བླ་མ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ ཇལ་བྱུང་། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་ ཁོང་གིས་ མཇལ་དར་ གནང་མ་སོང།
My hypothesis is that according to Nicholas Tournadre as described in The Manual of Standard Tibetan there should not be tone in the pink one because only first syllable in word carries tones, the tone in the blue one is to be low tone and in the red one high tone.
So here are some recordings from Tibetan-speaking friends:
Conclusion
I struggle to appreciate the tone nuances, so I am not convinced about the hypothesis.
Responses
After speaking to Dimitri from the SINI Colloquial Tibetan course he said:
Hi, Ramon. You asked a question about tones. And mentioned Tournadre who says: no tones after the 1st syllable. We could chat about it. But it’s true. Only the tone of the 1st syllable is “kept” while the rest of the word becomes neutral. What it means in practice is a bit more complicated: usually, the tone of the second syllable kinda travels in the opposite direction of the first syllable’s tone. But not far. One can hear it very well if one pays attention to the pronounciation of the native speakers in our Anki cards.
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Especially the last lesson (4) helps answer your question. But I think it’s really too much detail. The rule I derived from it: The second syllable is more neutral than the first one (in terms of its tone) and is a bit like an “afterthought”. In Anki they are very clear with the tone of the first syllable and the second is really neither high nor low. So, it kinda compensates the first syllable. If the first one is high, the second one returns back to lower. If the first one is low, the second returns back to higher.
I think for us as non-native speakers it’s a bit of an overkill, actually.
Eloi my linguist friend from Barcelona Tibet House said:
The point here is that the “neutral tone” is higher than the low but lower than the high. And in addition, Tibetan does not have a prosodic accent but the accent always stretches towards the end (like French). This creates the illusion of a mobile accent.
Ani Tenzin Wangmo, fellow student from my learning group:
More about tones and genders of sounds/letters are in Tagjug grammar book, which is considered advanced level, related to written Tibetan.