ABSTRACT

Some of the names of Western countries are apparent transliterations from English such as America sometimes truncated into a shorter form, Canada, France, Korea, etc. Some other names, which sound less akin to the English language, are earlier transliterations into Tibetan such as England and Germany to indicate a person’s nationality, one uses the genitive case marker after the country’s name. They refer to the origin of someone/something but not the language. For instance, means Japanese (a Japanese person and not the Japanese language). Good penmanship, as well as proper spelling, is usually regarded as a reflection of one’s education. Therefore, even though the thick-thin contrast of stroke shape in traditional calligraphy cannot be easily produced with a ball-point pen, it is still a good idea for a student to write neatly and smoothly and to cultivate an esthetic sense of what makes proper Tibetan calligraphy.