Braille

:This article is about the writing system. There is also an asteroid 9969 Braille

Braille for other scripts

There are many extensions of Braille for additional letters with diacritics, such as ç, ô, é.

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When Braille is adapted to languages which do not use the Latin alphabet, the blocks are generally assigned to the new alphabet according to how it is transliterated into the Latin alphabet, and the alphabetic order of the national script (and therefore the natural order of Latin Braille) is disregarded. Such is the case with Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. In Greek, for example, gamma is written as Latin g, despite the fact that it has the alphabetic position of c; Hebrew beth, the second letter of the alphabet and cognate with the Latin letter b, is instead written v, as it is commonly pronounced; Russian ts is written as c, which is the usual letter for /ts/ in the Slavic languages which use the Latin alphabet; and Arabic f is written as f, despite being historically p, and occurring in that part of the Arabic alphabet (between historic o and q). In Chinese Braille, which is based on Zhuyin rather than the Latin Pinyin alphabet, there are additional blocks for the tones, diphthongs, and vowel + final consonant combinations, as well as Latin Braille blocks for the initial consonants and simple vowels. There are separate systems based on different spoken variants of Chinese.

Related Topics:
Latin alphabet - Cognate - Zhuyin - Pinyin - Spoken variants

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However, at least two adaptations of Braille have completely reassigned the Latin sound values of the blocks. These are:

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• Japanese Braille
• Korean Braille

In Japanese Braille, the alphabetic signs for a consonant and vowel are combined into a single syllabic block; in Korean Braille, the consonants have different syllable-initial and syllable-final forms. These modifications made Braille much more compatible with Japanese kana and Korean hangul, but meant that the Latin sound values could not be maintained.

Related Topics:
Kana - Hangul

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