ABSTRACT
Classical or written Tibetan has formal declension of adjectives, but formal declension is not commonly used in spoken Amdo Tibetan. Careful learners may have noticed that in the last two examples, the Tibetan sentences compare Tom’s Tibetan with John, and not the more logical John’s as well as the steamed buns of one restaurant to other restaurants. The excessive degree of an adjective is expressed in English by a single adverb too. A situation that cannot be attributed to some man-made result, therefore, cannot be expressed by Direct translations of the English expressions such as it rains too hard, the weather is too cold, the mountain is too high, the wind is too strong , etc., all sound strange to Tibetan ears, because these are natural phenomena that are not caused by the fault of men. Tibetan has no word-for-word translation for the adverbial use of enough to modify adjectives such as sweet enough, cool enough.
