The Ladakhi Language, as spoken in Leh

The Ladakhi language originally only existed in the spoken form; therefore the language itself was primarily closely linked to Tibetan, as it was an area similar in many respects. This meant that, when it was decided to develop Ladakhi into a written form, the Ladakhi speakers decided to use the Tibetan script. Therefore, this is a language which is transcribed in a phonetic form, meaning that it can be translated into English relatively easily. For that reason, many words in the Ladakhi dialect have spelling variations, such as the all-purpose greeting “jule” which can also be written as “jullay.”

This article formerly appeared on ScriptSource.