The Dalai Lama on Thursday added a new entry to his English vocabulary - "political correctness" - oddly enough in Prague, a liberal city known for leniency towards the incorrect.

Tibet's spiritual leader, who is in the Czech capital to speak about human rights in Asia at a conference on Friday, found himself lost for words when a Czech journalist asked him what he thought about political correctness.

"What do you mean?" he blinked, genuinely puzzled.

His expression forced laughs from the crowd and an eloquent explanation from the journalist, but the Dalai Lama still looked stumped.

"What do you mean?" he repeated, shaking his head and turning to his assistants for help.

After a lengthy discourse, the Dalai Lama straightened up but still radiated uncertainty.

"I don't know... I openly express - if someone's short, I express it as short. If someone's very tall, I say very tall," he mused.

"Of course, if you create embarrassment, you can't be saying this. But otherwise, black is black, white is white, yellow is yellow. And that's it."