A brief examination of any Tibetan text is enough to reveal whether the work in question belongs to the classical or modern genre, or if it is intended to represent the standard, Central Tibetan spoken language. There are three main criteria that make it possible to make an immediate identification of the style or register:

• case markers
• auxiliaries
• the type of connectives

Any sentence must necessarily contain at least one of these categories. A sound knowledge of the essential differences between the spoken and the literary languages will make it possible to shift from one to the other without any difficulty.