Mainland Chinese Braille is a braille script for Standard Chinese used in China.[1] Consonants and basic finals conform to international braille, but additional finals form a semi-syllabary, as in bopomofo. Each syllable is written with up to three Braille cells, representing the initial, final, and tone, respectively. In practice tone is generally omitted as it is in pinyin.
Chinese Braille ⠓⠩⠆⠓⠡⠂⠀⠍⠦⠂⠒⠂ | |
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Script type | |
Print basis | Pinyin, bopomofo |
Languages | Standard Chinese |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Night writing
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Mainland Chinese Braille | |||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 現行盲文 | ||||||
Simplified Chinese | 现行盲文 | ||||||
Literal meaning | Current Braille | ||||||
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Traditional Chinese Braille is as follows:[2][3]
Chinese Braille initials generally follow the pinyin assignments of international braille. However, j, q, x are replaced with g, k, h, as the difference is predictable from the final. (This reflects the historical change of g, k, h (and also z, c, s) to j, q, x before i and ü.) The digraphs ch, sh, zh are assigned to ⠟ (its pronunciation in Russian Braille), ⠱ (a common pronunciation in international braille), and ⠌. R is assigned to ⠚, reflecting the old Wade-Giles transcription of ⟨j⟩. (⠗ is used for the final er, the pronunciation of the name of that letter in English Braille.)
Pinyin | b | p | m | f | d | t | n | l | g/j | k/q | h/x | zh | ch | sh | r | z | c | s |
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Bopomofo | ㄅ | ㄆ | ㄇ | ㄈ | ㄉ | ㄊ | ㄋ | ㄌ | ㄍ ㄐ |
ㄎ ㄑ |
ㄏ ㄒ |
ㄓ | ㄔ | ㄕ | ㄖ | ㄗ | ㄘ | ㄙ |
Braille |
The finals approximate international braille values for several of the basic vowels (⠢ e (o), ⠊ yi, ⠕ wo, ⠥ wu, ⠬ yü, ⠳ you, ⠮ ei), but then necessarily diverge. However, there are a few parallels with other braille alphabets: ⠗ er and ⠽ wai are pronounced like the names of those letters in English braille; ⠑ ye, ⠫ ya, and ⠳ you are pronounced like those letters in Russian Braille. ⠯ yuan, ⠾ yue, ⠣ yin, are similar to the old French pronunciations oin, ieu, in. For the most part, however, Chinese Braille finals do not obviously derive from previous conventions.
The pinyin final -i is only written where it corresponds to yi. Otherwise* (in ci zi si ri chi zhi shi) no final is written, a convention also found in bopomofo. The final -e is not written in ⠙ de, a common grammatical particle written with several different characters in print.[4]
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Tone is marked sparingly.
Tone | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | neutral |
Pinyin | ¯ | ´ | ˇ | ` | (none) |
Zhuyin | (none) | ˊ | ˇ | ˋ | ˙ |
Braille | (none) |
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Chinese Braille punctuation approximates the form of international braille punctuation, but several spread the corresponding dots across two cells rather than one. For example, the period is ⠐⠆, which is the same pattern as the international single-cell norm of ⠲.
。 | , | 、 | ? | ! | : | ; | - | — | … | · | ( | ) | [ and ] | 《 | 》 | “ | ” | ‘ | ’ | |
Chinese Braille | ||||||||||||||||||||
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French equivalent | ⠲ | ⠂ | ⠢ | ⠖ | ⠒ | ⠆ | ⠤ | ⠄⠄⠄ | ⠀ | ⠦ | ⠴ | ⠶ |
A braille cell ⠼ called number sign (simplified Chinese: 数号; traditional Chinese: 數號; pinyin: shùhào) is needed when representing numbers.
Number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 |
Braille |
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Examples:
Two examples, the first with full tone marking, the second with tone for disambiguation only:
⠱⠂⠛⠩⠁⠀ | ⠃⠥⠆⠀ | ⠵⠖⠄⠀ | ⠇⠢⠰⠂ |
时间 | 不 | 早 | 了! |
Shíjiān | bù | zǎo | le! |
time | not | early | PFV |
⠉⠖⠄⠙⠊⠆⠀ | ⠱⠦⠀ | ⠙⠀ | ⠓⠿⠁⠀ | ⠱⠆⠀ | ⠋⠼⠀ | ⠟⠺⠅⠪⠀ | ⠙⠐⠆ |
草地 | 上 | 的 | 花 | 是 | 风 | 吹开 | 的。 |
cǎodì | shang | de | huā | shi | feng | chuikai | de. |
grass | above | which | flower | is | wind | [a] | by |
Chinese Braille has the same low level of ambiguity that pinyin does. In practice, tone is omitted 95% of the time, which leads to a space saving of a third. Tone is also omitted in pinyin military telegraphy, and causes little confusion in context.
The initial pairs g/j, k/q, h/x are distinguished by the final: initials j, q, x are followed by the vowels i or ü, while the initials g, k, h are followed by other vowels. This reflects the historical derivation of j, q, x from g, k, h before i and ü,[5] and parallels the dual pronunciations of c and g in Spanish and Italian. In pinyin, the redundancy is resolved in the other direction, with the diaeresis omitted from ü after j, q, x. Thus braille ⟨gü⟩ is equivalent to pinyin ju:
The China Library for the Blind (Chinese: 中国盲文图书馆) in Beijing has several thousand volumes, mostly published by the China Braille Press (Chinese: 中国盲文出版社).[6] The National Taiwan Library has a Braille room with a postal mail service and some electronic documents.[7][irrelevant citation]