Taiwanese_Braille

Taiwanese Braille

Taiwanese Braille

Braille script used in Taiwan for Standard Mandarin

Taiwanese Braille is the braille script used in Taiwan for Taiwanese Mandarin (Guoyu).[1] Although based marginally on international braille, most consonants have been reassigned;[2] also, like Chinese Braille, Taiwanese Braille is a semi-syllabary.

Quick Facts Taiwanese Braille ⠅⠒⠂⠳⠈⠀⠙⠞⠈⠓⠱⠐, Script type ...
A quadriscriptal text in Chinese and Roman print and braille. In the lower right corner is the character 結 jié, written in braille as ⠅⠬⠂ gyé; compare 西 xī at the center top, rendered in braille as ⠑⠡⠄ syī.

An example is,

國語點字記號
⠅ (braille pattern dots-13) ⠒ (braille pattern dots-25) ⠂ (braille pattern dots-2) ⠳ (braille pattern dots-1256) ⠈ (braille pattern dots-4) ⠙ (braille pattern dots-145) ⠞ (braille pattern dots-2345) ⠈ (braille pattern dots-4) ⠓ (braille pattern dots-125) ⠱ (braille pattern dots-156) ⠐ (braille pattern dots-5) ⠅ (braille pattern dots-13) ⠡ (braille pattern dots-16) ⠐ (braille pattern dots-5) ⠗ (braille pattern dots-1235) ⠩ (braille pattern dots-146) ⠐ (braille pattern dots-5)
ㄍㄨㄛˊㄩˇㄉㄧㄢˇㄗㄭˋㄐㄧˋㄏㄠˋ
guóyǔdiǎnzìjìhào

Charts

Initials

More information Zhuyin, Pinyin ...

The braille letters for zhuyin/pinyin ㄍ g (/k/), ㄘ c (/tsʰ/), and ㄙ s (/s/) double for the alveolo-palatal consonants ㄐ j (/tɕ/), ㄑ q (/tɕʰ/), and ㄒ x (/ɕ/).[3] The latter are followed by close front vowels, namely ㄧ i (/i/) and ㄩ ü (/y/), so the distinction between g, c, s (or z, k, h) and j, q, x in zhuyin and pinyin is redundant.

Medial + rime

Each medial + rime in zhuyin is written with a single letter in braille.

More information Zhuyin, Pinyin ...

⠱ is used for both the empty rime -i ([ɨ]), which is not written in zhuyin, and the rime ㄦ er ([ɐɚ]). See for example 斯 sī (⠑⠱⠄) located above the word Daguerre in the image at right.

Tone Marks

More information Tone:, Zhuyin ...

Tone is always marked.[4] This includes toneless syllables such as 了 le, rendered ⠉⠮⠁lė in the image above-right.

Punctuation marks

Punctuation[5]

More information Print, Braille ...
More information Print, Braille ...
More information Print, Braille ...

References

  1. [1]
    Not for Taiwanese Hokkien, which commonly goes by the name "Taiwanese"
  2. [2]
    Only p m d n g c a e ê ü (from p m d n k j ä è dropped-e ü) approximate the French norm. Other letters have been reassigned so that the sets of letters in groups such as d t n l and g k h are similar in shape.
  3. [3]
    [sic] One might expect ㄐ j (/tɕ/) to pair with ㄗ z (/ts/), by analogy with the others. Compare here, where the character 學 xué is rendered ⠑⠦⠂ "süé". Historically it could have been either. The principal behind the assignments seems to be that, of the historically appropriate pairs of letters g~z, k~c, and h~s, the letter with the fewer dots is used for j, q, x.
  4. [4]
    "JAPANESE BRAILLE. : languagehat.com". languagehat.com. Retrieved 2022-02-27.
  5. [5]
    萬明美, 2001, 「視障教育」, 五南圖書出版股份有限公司, p. 74 ff
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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Taiwanese_Braille, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.