Mainland Chinese Braille

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
Script type
Print basis
Pinyin, bopomofo
LanguagesStandard Chinese
Related scripts
Parent systems
Night writing
Mainland Chinese Braille
Traditional Chinese現行盲文
Simplified Chinese现行盲文
Literal meaningCurrent Braille
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinXiànxíng Mángwén
A sample Mainland Chinese Braille text in Xujiahui Park, Shanghai. Most of the tones are omitted except for in a few places that may cause confusion. Note that the vowel in the particle *de* is always written in this text, rather than being omitted.

Braille charts

edit

Traditional Chinese Braille is as follows:[2][3]

Initials

edit

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
Bopomofo


Braille                                    

Finals

edit

The finals approximate international braille values for several of the basic vowels ( e (o), yi, wo, wu, , 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]

Pinyin Bopomofo Braille
a  
e/o

 
ai  
ei  
ao  
ou  
an  
en  
ang  
eng  
Pinyin Bopomofo Braille
yi, -i*  
ya, -ia ㄧㄚ  
ye, -ie ㄧㄝ  
yao, -iao ㄧㄠ  
you, -iu ㄧㄡ  
yan, -ian ㄧㄢ  
yang, -iang ㄧㄤ  
yin, -in ㄧㄣ  
ying, -ing ㄧㄥ  
Pinyin Bopomofo Braille
wu, -u  
wa, -ua ㄨㄚ  
wo, -uo ㄨㄛ  
wai, -uai ㄨㄞ  
wei, -ui ㄨㄟ  
wan, -uan ㄨㄢ  
wen, -un ㄨㄣ  
wang, -uang ㄨㄤ  
weng, -ong ㄨㄥ  
Pinyin Bopomofo Braille
yu, -ü  
yue, -üe ㄩㄝ  
yuan, -üan ㄩㄢ  
yun, -ün ㄩㄣ  
yong, -iong ㄩㄥ  
er  

Tones

edit

Tone is marked sparingly.

Tone 1 2 3 4 neutral
Pinyin ¯ ´ ˇ ` (none)
Zhuyin (none) ˊ ˇ ˋ ˙
Braille         (none)

Punctuation

edit

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

edit

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                    

Examples:

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

Rules

edit
  • 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:

1)
时间不早了! (時間不早了!)
⠱⠂⠛⠩⠁⠀⠃⠥⠆⠀⠵⠖⠄⠀⠇⠢⠰⠂

时间

Shíjiān

time

not

zǎo

early

了!

le!

PFV

时间 不 早 了!

Shíjiān bù zǎo le!

time not early PFV

2)
草地上的花是风吹开的。
⠉⠖⠄⠙⠊⠆⠀⠱⠦⠀⠙⠀⠓⠿⠁⠀⠱⠆⠀⠋⠼⠀⠟⠺⠅⠪⠀⠙⠐⠆

草地

cǎodì

grass

shang

above

de

which

huā

flower

shi

is

feng

wind

吹开

chuikai

blow

的。

de.

by

草地 上 的 花 是 风 吹开 的。

cǎodì shang de huā shi feng chuikai de.

grass above which flower is wind blow by

The meaning of this metaphorical sentence should be “Flowers on the grasslands bloom because of the blowing wind.”

Ambiguity

edit

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:

gu,
ju.

Usage

edit

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]

See also

edit
 
A sample of Moon type in various languages including Ningbo Chinese.

Notes

edit

References

edit
  • Grotz, J. (Aug 1991). "The necessary reform of Chinese Braille writing". Rehabilitation (Stuttgart). 30 (3): 153–5. PMID 1947424.
  1. ^ Pace Unesco (2013), a different alphabet is used in Taiwan, Taiwanese Braille.
  2. ^ Vivian Aldridge, 2000 [2002] How is Chinese written in braille? Archived 2006-10-05 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ GB/T 15720-2008, 中国盲文 (Chinese Braille)
  4. ^ UNESCO (2013) World Braille Usage Archived 2014-09-08 at the Wayback Machine, 3rd edition.
    ( is mistakenly said to be a contraction of di in the charts, but is confirmed as de in the sample.)
  5. ^ They also derive from z, c, s before i or ü, and this is the identity reflected in Taiwanese braille.
  6. ^ Fruchterman, Jim (2008-10-08). "Beneblog: Technology Meets Society: China Braille Press". Benetech.blogspot.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-08. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  7. ^ "Delivery of Library Materials". Southernlibrarianship.icaap.org. Archived from the original on 2012-04-01. Retrieved 2012-08-13.

Further reading

edit
  • Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming (1892). Work for the blind in China. Printed by Gilbert & Rivington, Limited, St. John's House, Clerkenwell, London E.C.: Gilbert & Rivington, Ld. p. 79. Retrieved April 23, 2012. [Original from Columbia University; digitized August 18, 2009]
edit
Listen to this article (34 minutes)
 
This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 24 January 2011 (2011-01-24), and does not reflect subsequent edits.