Dzongkha Alphabet & Letters

Dzongkha, རྫོང་ཁ, is the national language of Bhutan, and its name means "the language of the dzong", the whitewashed fortress-monasteries from which Bhutan's districts are governed. It is written in the Tibetan script, the same letters Bhutan's monasteries have used for more than a thousand years for Chöke, the classical language of Buddhist texts. Like its Indian ancestors the script is an abugida: every consonant carries a built-in vowel a, so ཀ on its own is ka.

The alphabet has 30 consonants, which the traditional order of the Tibetan alphabet sets out in lines of four, as in the grid: ཀ ཁ ག ང (ka kha ga nga), ཅ ཆ ཇ ཉ (ca cha ja nya), ཏ ཐ ད ན (ta tha da na), པ ཕ བ མ (pa pha ba ma), ཙ ཚ ཛ ཝ (tsa tsha dza wa), ཞ ཟ འ ཡ (zha za 'a ya), ར ལ ཤ ས (ra la sha sa) and ཧ ཨ (ha a). The last letter ཨ carries a word that begins with a vowel, and འ, the a-chung, mostly stands silent at the start or end of a syllable.

There are only four vowel signs, written above or below the letter: ི i (gigu), ུ u (zhabkyu), ེ e (drengbu) and ོ o (naro). So ཀི is ki, ཀུ ku, ཀེ ke and ཀོ ko. Dzongkha has no capital and small letters; the smaller shapes in the second column of the grid are the subjoined letters, the forms a consonant takes when it is written under another one.

Stacks, tsheg and shad: how Dzongkha words are spelled

A Dzongkha syllable is built around a root letter. A superscript ར, ལ or ས can sit on top of it, a subscript ྱ (ya), ྲ (ra), ླ (la) or ྭ (wa) can hang below it, and a prefix letter ག ད བ མ or འ can stand in front. In Unicode you type a stack as the top letter followed by the subjoined forms, and the font draws one tall cluster: ས + ྐ + ུ gives སྐུ (ku, body, the first syllable of the greeting kuzuzangpo), and ད + ྲ + ུ + ག gives དྲུག (drug, six).

Dzongkha puts no spaces between words. A small dot at the top of the line, the tsheg ་, closes every syllable, and the vertical stroke shad ། ends a phrase or sentence: འབྲུག་ཡུལ། is Druk Yul, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, Bhutan's own name for the country. After a syllable ending in ང a tsheg is kept before the shad, ང་། , so the stroke does not merge with the letter. The double ༎ closes a section, and a formal letter or text opens with the head marks ༄༅།.

The spelling is old and the speech has moved on, so many letters are silent or change the sound of others: འབྲུག ('brug) is said druk, རྫོང (rdzong) dzong and བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ (bka' drin che, thank you) kadrinchhe. Dzongkha also has high and low tones, which the old spelling often shows through its prefixes and superscripts. The Dzongkha Development Commission sets the standard spelling and publishes the dictionaries, and its official romanization, Roman Dzongkha, writes words as they sound: Druk Yul, Kuzuzangpo.

Dzongkha numbers ༡ ༢ ༣ in figures and in words

The Dzongkha digits ༠ ༡ ༢ ༣ ༤ ༥ ༦ ༧ ༨ ༩ come from the same Indian numerals as 0 to 9 and work the same way, so 2026 is ༢༠༢༦ and 108 is ༡༠༨. They appear in schoolbooks, official letters, dates and page numbers, while prices and phone numbers are usually in 0 to 9.

In words, one to ten are གཅིག chi, གཉིས nyi, གསུམ sum, བཞི zhi, ལྔ nga, དྲུག drug, བདུན dün, བརྒྱད gä, དགུ gu and བཅུ་ཐམ chutham. Besides the ordinary decimal numbers, Dzongkha keeps an old way of counting in twenties, with ཁལ (khä, a score): ཁལ་གཅིག is twenty and ཁལ་གཉིས forty.

How to type Dzongkha on a keyboard, laptop or phone

Windows 10 and 11 include a Dzongkha keyboard: add Dzongkha under Settings, Time & language, Language & region, then switch with Windows + Space. On a Mac, install a Dzongkha keyboard layout, then add it as an input source in Keyboard settings. You type in spelling order, the top letter of a stack first and then the letters below it, and the font builds the stack. On phones, add a Dzongkha keyboard (Gboard and Bhutanese keyboard apps have one) or the Tibetan keyboard, which types exactly the same letters. Or tap any letter in the grid above and paste it.

Dzongkha has no characters of its own in Unicode: its letters, vowel signs, punctuation and digits use the Tibetan block, U+0F00 to U+0FFF, so Dzongkha and Tibetan text share those codes. Fonts that show Dzongkha well are Microsoft Himalaya, built into Windows, the free Jomolhari, drawn in the Bhutanese style, Noto Serif Tibetan, and the fonts of the Dzongkha Development Commission such as Wangdi 29. If you see empty boxes or letters that do not stack, the font or the app lacks Tibetan support. In HTML a letter can be written by its number, e.g. ཀ for ཀ.

The letters in the grid are the printed style with a flat head line, used in books and on signs. Bhutanese handwriting has its own rounder, flowing style, joyig (མགྱོགས་ཡིག, "quick letters"); it is the same alphabet and the same Unicode text, only the font changes.

Where Dzongkha is spoken

CLDR estimates about 420,000 speakers of Dzongkha, almost all of them, about 416,000, in Bhutan 🇧🇹. Dzongkha grew out of the speech of the western valleys around Thimphu, Paro and Punakha, was made the national language in 1971 and is named as such in the 2008 constitution. It is the language of government, of the dzongs and of the national news, and most Bhutanese who speak Tshangla (Sharchop) in the east, Nepali in the south or one of the country's many smaller languages at home learn it at school, where it is a compulsory subject alongside lessons taught in English.

India 🇮🇳 has a small community of about 2,800 speakers in CLDR's estimate, and Bhutanese students and workers abroad, especially in Australia, write Dzongkha home every day. Bhutan's money, the ngultrum, has no Unicode sign: prices are written Nu. 500, and the ngultrum is pegged at par to the Indian rupee ₹, which circulates freely in Bhutan but is not legal tender.

Dzongkha is a close relative of Tibetan and shares its script; written Dzongkha looks much like Tibetan, but the spoken languages are hard to follow for each other's speakers, and Dzongkha has its own grammar words, such as ལུ (lu, to) where Tibetan has ལ. See the Tibetan collection for the full set of Tibetan and Sanskrit letters, the Bhutan collection for the flag, the thunder dragon 🐉 and Bhutanese food emoji, and the Nepali, English and India collections for Bhutan's other languages and its neighbour.