Hausa is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people, mainly within the territories of Niger and the northern half of Nigeria, and with significant minorities in Chad, Ghana, and Cameroon.
Ewe is a language spoken in Togo and southeastern Ghana by approximately 6.61 million people as a first language and a million or so more as a second language. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe; the other major Gbe language is Fon of Benin. Like many African languages, Ewe is tonal.
Dagbani, also known as Dagbanli and Dagbanle, is a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Its native speakers are estimated around 3,160,000. It is a compulsory subject in primary and junior high school in the Dagbon Kingdom, which covers the eastern part of the region. Dagbani is the most widely spoken language in northern Ghana, especially among acephalous tribes overseen by the King of Dagbon, the Ya-Na.
Akan is a Central Tano language and the principal native language of the Akan people of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana. About 80% of Ghana's population can speak Akan, and about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers. It is also spoken in parts of Côte d'Ivoire.
Fante, also known as Fanti, Fantse, or Mfantse, is one of the three principal members of the Akan dialect continuum, along with Asante and Akuapem, the latter two collectively known as Twi, with which it is mutually intelligible. It is principally spoken in the central and southern regions of Ghana as well as in settlements in other regions in western Ghana.
Kabiye is an Eastern Gurunsi Gur language spoken primarily in northern Togo. Throughout the 20th century, there was extensive emigration to the centre and south of Togo and also to Ghana and Benin. Kabiye speakers made up over 23% of the Togolese population in 1999.
Ghana is a multilingual country in which about eighty languages are spoken. Of these, English, which was inherited from the colonial era, is the official language and lingua franca. Of the languages indigenous to Ghana, Akan is the most widely spoken.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) possesses a variety of obsolete and nonstandard symbols. Throughout the history of the IPA, characters representing phonetic values have been modified or completely replaced. An example is ⟨ɷ⟩ for standard. Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that such things should be indicated with diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series has been dropped.
Vietnamese Braille is the braille alphabet used for the Vietnamese language. It is very close to French Braille, but with the addition of tone letters. Vietnamese Braille is known in Vietnamese as chữ nổi, literally "raised letters", while electronic braille displays are called màn hình chữ nổi.
Thai Braille (อักษรเบรลล์) and Lao Braille (ອັກສອນເບຣລລ໌) are the braille alphabets of the Thai language and Lao language. Thai Braille was adapted by Genevieve Caulfield, who knew both English and Japanese Braille. Unlike the print Thai alphabet, which is an abugida, Thai and Lao Braille have full letters rather than diacritics for vowels. However, traces of the abugida remain: Only the consonants are based on the international English and French standard, while the vowels are reassigned and the five vowels transcribed a e i o u are taken from Japanese Braille.
Dagaare is the maternal language of the Dagaaba people in Ghana and Burkina Faso. It has been described as a dialect continuum that also includes Waale and Birifor.
Hebrew Braille is the braille alphabet for Hebrew. The International Hebrew Braille Code is widely used. It was devised in the 1930s and completed in 1944. It is based on international norms, with additional letters devised to accommodate differences between English Braille and the Hebrew alphabet. Unlike Hebrew, but in keeping with other braille alphabets, Hebrew Braille is read from left to right instead of right to left., and unlike English Braille, it is an Abjad, all consonants.
Tibetan Braille is the braille alphabet for writing the Tibetan language. It was invented in 1992 by German socialworker Sabriye Tenberken. It is based on German braille, with some extensions from international usage. As in print, the vowel a is not written.
With the adoption of letters from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in various national alphabets, letter case forms have been developed. This usually means capital (uppercase) forms were developed, but in the case of the glottal stop, both uppercase ⟨Ɂ⟩ and lowercase ⟨ɂ⟩ are used.
Bharati braille, or Bharatiya Braille, is a largely unified braille script for writing the languages of India. When India gained independence, eleven braille scripts were in use, in different parts of the country and for different languages. By 1951, a single national standard had been settled on, Bharati braille, which has since been adopted by Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh. There are slight differences in the orthographies for Nepali in India and Nepal, and for Tamil in India and Sri Lanka. There are significant differences in Bengali Braille between India and Bangladesh, with several letters differing. Pakistan has not adopted Bharati braille, so the Urdu Braille of Pakistan is an entirely different alphabet than the Urdu Braille of India, with their commonalities largely due to their common inheritance from English or International Braille. Sinhala Braille largely conforms to other Bharati, but differs significantly toward the end of the alphabet, and is covered in its own article.
The goal of braille uniformity is to unify the braille alphabets of the world as much as possible, so that literacy in one braille alphabet readily transfers to another. Unification was first achieved by a convention of the International Congress on Work for the Blind in 1878, where it was decided to replace the mutually incompatible national conventions of the time with the French values of the basic Latin alphabet, both for languages that use Latin-based alphabets and, through their Latin equivalents, for languages that use other scripts. However, the unification did not address letters beyond these 26, leaving French and German Braille partially incompatible and as braille spread to new languages with new needs, national conventions again became disparate. A second round of unification was undertaken under the auspices of UNESCO in 1951, setting the foundation for international braille usage today.
Several braille alphabets are used in Nigeria. For English, Unified English Braille has been adopted. Three other languages have been written in braille: Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. All three alphabets are based on English readings, with the addition of letters particular to these languages. Punctuation is as in English Braille.
IPA Braille is the modern standard Braille encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as recognized by the International Council on English Braille.
Burmese Braille is the braille alphabet of languages of Burma written in the Burmese script, including Burmese and Karen. Letters that may not seem at first glance to correspond to international norms are more recognizable when traditional romanization is considered. For example, သ s is rendered ⠹th, which is how it was romanized when Burmese Braille was developed ; similarly စ c and ဇ j as ⠎s and ⠵z.
Catalan Braille is the braille alphabet of the Catalan language. It is very close to French Braille: it uses the 26 letters of the basic braille alphabet, plus several additional letters for ç and what are, in print, vowel letters with diacritics; these differ from their French values only in the need to accommodate the Catalan acute accent: ú, ó, í for what are in French Braille ù, œ, ì :
