Tibetan Braille is the Braille alphabet for writing the Tibetan language. It was invented in 1992 by German social worker Sabriye Tenberken. It is based on German braille, with some extensions from international usage. As in print, the vowel a is not written.
Despite Tibetan and Dzongkha (Bhutanese) using the same alphabet in print, Tibetan Braille differs significantly from Dzongkha Braille, which tends to asign patterns more based on the romanisation.
Alphabet Tibetan Braille follows print orthography. (See Tibetan script.) This is often a poor match for how words are pronounced. Each syllable is rendered in the following order:
pre-consonant, superscript consonant, head consonant, subscript consonant, vowel, post-consonant(s)From email correspondence with Sabriye Tenberken: Single consonants are written without a "a". Only i e o and u are indicated. The order goes like this: first the pre consonant, this could be a b, m d ' etc. Then the main consonant. After the main consonant the vowel and then the post consonant. If the main consonant has a super or a sub script, an extra letter that indicates the super script or the subscript is put before and after the main consonant. However it has to be placed before the vowel. If you have a word with all letters possible, it looks as follows: Pre consonant superscript main consonant sub script vowel post consonant second post consonant For example: bsgrubs
The invariable consonants are:World Braille Usage, UNESCO, 2013
Consonant ka kha ga nga ca cha ja nya Printཀ ཁ ག ང ཅ ཆ ཇ ཉ Braille
Consonant ta tha da na pa pha ba ma Printཏ ཐ ད ན པ ཕ བ མ Braille
Consonant tsa tsha dza zha za 'a sha ha Printཙ ཚ ཛ ཞ ཟ འ ཤ ཧ Braille
Several consonants, wa, ya, ra, la, and sa, are provided with forms corresponding to the superscript and subscript positions in print:
Consonant wa ya ra la sa Printཝ ཡ ར ལ ས Braille as base letter as superscript – – as subscript –
Several of the assignments do not match the assignment suggested by their Wylie transliteration, but are instead chosen to match letters with similar sounds in the German Braille: ch for c, j for y , z for tsh, s for z, sch for sh, ß for s. Letters which are not basic to the German alphabet (c, q, x, y) have been reassigned. Several of the aspirated consonants (ch, th, ph) are equivalent to the corresponding unaspirated consonant with an extra dot in the third row. The assignments for zh and z matches the assignment often given to sh and s, since those letters are pronounced like English sh and s .
The short vowel "a" is inherent in the head (main) consonant, and is not written explicitly. When a vowel occurs at the beginning of a word, it is carried by a null consonant ཨ :
Vowels a i u e o Print (on ཨ )ཨ ཨི ཨུ ཨེ ཨོ Braille
Numbers and punctuation Digits are as in English Braille. Basic punctuation:
Print , ; . Braille
References