What iphone language setting is this in & what does this mean: ༜࿂࿂༄ཀགོཡུ།།

Tom – It's Tibetan script, but it's not a Tibetan word so far as I know. I'm not fluent in Tibetan, but have a basic familiarity with its script and structure, and can use a dictionary. In any case, this is not a Tibetan word, as it's not structured properly. The first four items are ornaments (including the ༄); then follow three consonant letters (ཀ ka; ga + o = གོ go; ya + u = ཡུ yu); then the two vertical punctuation marks which mark the end of the equivalent of a sentence or paragraph. So the three letters would be pronounced "ka-go-yu", but it if were a real Tibetan word there would be a dot (tsek) after the ka, and another after the go, to separate the syllables. Nor do I find anything like "ka-go-yu" in my Tibetan dictionary.

Example: བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། - Tashi Delek, the common Tibetan greeting; note dots separating syllables.

In Tibetan Buddhism Sanskrit words are sometimes written in the Tibetan script (which was derived from an Indian script used to write Sanskrit, so this is comparatively simple to do), in which case the separating dot is not used. I don't think "kagoyu" is a Sanskrit word, however. (And it's not the Tibetan spelling of the name of the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism; that's བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་.) So I don't know what it is, possibly just a random selection of sample glyphs from the Tibetan character set.

Btw, it's the Uchen script (with an e); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uchen_script.

newapplehelp wrote:

Ka go yu

Is that in "Wiley" language

Don't I have to covert it again from Wiley into English?

It doesn't seem to mean anything. Where exactly did you see it?

For a dictionary you can try

http://www.nitartha.org/dictionary_search04.html

newapplehelp wrote:

Ka go yu

Is that in "Wiley" language

Don't I have to covert it again from Wiley into English?

"Wiley" is not a language, it is a system for transliterating Tibetan letters into Latin letters, chiefly used by scholars because it gives an accurate representation of the Tibetan word in Latin letters, including letters that are silent or pronounced differently in Tibetan. Like English, Tibetan is only partially phonetic in its writing; there are numerous letters which are written but not pronounced in speech, while other letters are pronounced differently than theirr "nominal" sound either singly or in combination. As in English, where a student must learn that "tion" is pronounced "shun".

Transliteration produces a letter-for-letter copy in a different alphabet, such as the Latin alphabet we use. Transcription of Tibetan produces a word in Latin letters that shows how the word sounds, which may be very different from how it's spelled. (There have been numerous systems of transcription for Tibetan; currently the best for international use is the THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription [see below]. Also many Tibetan words and names are commonly known in varying idiosyncratic transcriptions which don't follow any formal system.) Translation gives the equivalent of the Tibetan word in another language, such as English. For instance, the expression above:

བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། (common Tibetan greeting, like Hawaiian "aloha" or Hebrew "shalom")

Wiley transliteration: bkra shis bde legs

THL transcription: tra shi dé lek

Common rendering: Tashi Delek

Translation: Auspicious Blessings

If you're interested in learning about Tibetan, a good place to start is Wikipedia, which has good articles about the language, its script (alphabet), and transliteration systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Tibetan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_alphabet

If you're seriously interested, you can try this Tibetan Language Student website:

http://www.learntibetan.net

Note that the Tibetan text on this site is not in Unicode, so you have to download a special font for it.

This book is the best introductory on the Tibetan script and how it works: "Tibetan Language Pre-Primer":

http://www.namsebangdzo.com/Tibetan_Language_Pre_Primer_p/11371.htm

Or if you're really serious, the Tibetan Language Institute:

http://www.tibetanlanguage.org

And the Tibetan & Himalayan Library offers pages which can convert Tibetan script to Wylie transliteration:

http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/wyconverter.php

and phonetic transcription:

http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/phconverter.php

and simple translation (currently unavailable?):

http://www.thlib.org/reference/dictionaries/tibetan-dictionary/translate.php

Is שלום. an actual real word?

שלום is Hebrew, not Tibetan, and is a word. Hebrew is phonetically written, so both transliteration and transcription for שלום is "shalom", and it translates as "peace" in English.

newapplehelp wrote:

It is very intriguing and I found myself reading the wiki pages on it.

Could you tell us where you found the text you asked about and put in the subject line? It doesn't seem to be anything real, but if it is, then it would be interesting to see where it has been used.

newapplehelp wrote:

I can't find any wylie dictionary with the word kagoyu in it

I don't think any real word even comes very close, you might want to ask the friend. Perhaps it is a screen or other name of some sort.

newapplehelp wrote:

the ༜ starts the beginning of the word as does the ࿂࿂

But not sure why he put it the ༄ which I think means @

?? And the །། ends the phrase right?

As HandyMac wrote earlier, the first 4 characters are just ornaments, they don't normally mean anything. The only part that might mean something is ཀགོཡུ

It's Tibetan. Will have to find a dictionary to translate....

Tibetan in the Uchin script.