Mainland Chinese Braille

Mainland Chinese Braille is a braille script for Standard Chinese used in China.Pace Unesco (2013), a different alphabet is used in Taiwan, Taiwanese Braille. 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.

Braille charts Traditional Chinese Braille is as follows:Vivian Aldridge, 2000 How is Chinese written in braille? GB/T 15720-2008, (Chinese Braille)

Initials 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 . ( is used for the final er, the pronunciation of the name of that letter in English Braille.)

Pinyin bpmfdtnlg/jk/qh/xzhchshrzcsBopomofoㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄐㄎㄑㄏㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙ Braille

Finals 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.UNESCO (2013) World Braille Usage , 3rd edition.( is mistakenly said to be a contraction of di in the charts, but is confirmed as de in the sample.)

PinyinBopomofoBrailleaㄚe/oㄛㄜㄝaiㄞeiㄟaoㄠouㄡanㄢenㄣangㄤengㄥPinyinBopomofoBrailleyi, -i*ㄧya, -iaㄧㄚye, -ieㄧㄝyao, -iaoㄧㄠyou, -iuㄧㄡyan, -ianㄧㄢyang, -iangㄧㄤyin, -inㄧㄣying, -ingㄧㄥPinyinBopomofoBraillewu, -uㄨwa, -uaㄨㄚwo, -uoㄨㄛwai, -uaiㄨㄞwei, -uiㄨㄟwan, -uanㄨㄢwen, -unㄨㄣwang, -uangㄨㄤweng, -ongㄨㄥPinyinBopomofoBrailleyu, -üㄩyue, -üeㄩㄝyuan, -üanㄩㄢyun, -ünㄩㄣyong, -iongㄩㄥerㄦ

Tones Tone is marked sparingly.

Tone 1234neutral Pinyin ¯´ˇ`(none)Zhuyin(none)ˊˇˋ˙ Braille (none)

Punctuation 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 .

Print and Chinese Braille French equivalent

Numbers A braille cell ⠼ called number sign () is needed when representing numbers. Number 1234567890 Braille

Examples: 0, 1, 2, … 9, 10, 11, 12, … 19, … 29, … 99, 100, 256, 1024, 1048576.

Rules Spaces are added between words, rather than between syllables. Tone is marked when needed. It comes after the final. As in bopomofo, the finals of the syllables zi, ci, si, zhi, chi, shi, ri are not marked.

Two examples, the first with full tone marking, the second with tone for disambiguation only:

Ambiguity 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,They also derive from z, c, s before i or ü, and this is the identity reflected in Taiwanese braille. 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 is equivalent to pinyin ju: gu, ju.

Usage The China Library for the Blind () in Beijing has several thousand volumes, mostly published by the China Braille Press (). The National Taiwan Library has a Braille room with a postal mail service and some electronic documents.

Mainland Chinese Braille

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