| Portuguese Braille | |
|---|---|
| Script type | alphabet |
Print basis | Portuguese alphabet |
| Languages | Portuguese |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Braille
|
Sister systems | Spanish Braille |
Portuguese Braille is the braille alphabet of the Portuguese language, both in Portugal and in Brazil. It is very close to French Braille, with slight modification of the accented letters and some differences in punctuation.
The French Braille letters for vowels with a grave accent in print tend to be used for vowels with an acute accents in Portuguese Braille. (See French Braille#Similar alphabets. The French vowels ⠪œ and ⠜ä are used for the Portuguese nasal vowels õ and ã. In numerical order, the letters are:
Punctuation is nearly identical to that of Spanish Braille.
Single punctuation:
 |  | |  |  |  |  |  |  | |  |  |  |
| , | . [1] | ' | ? | ! | ; | : | - | – | — | * | / | | |
The en dash is written on the middle dots, while the em dash is written on the bottom dots.
  |  | | | |
| • | & | → | ← | ↔ |
Paired punctuation:
 ... | ... |  ... |
| “ ... ” (outer quotes) | « ... » (inner quotes) | ‘ ... ’ etc. (innermost quotes) |
 ...  | ... |  ...  | ... |
| ( ... ) | ( ... ) | [ ... ] | [ ... ] |
The two sets of parentheses and square brackets are alternatives. Many sources give only one, usually the second.
Digits are the international norm of the first ten letters of the alphabet marked by ⠼.
The number sign takes the place of spaces within a number such as a serial number. For example, A (46 1) is transcribed ⠨⠁⠀⠣⠼⠙⠋⠼⠁⠜.
Additional symbols:
| |   |  | |  | |  | |
| $ | € | % | ‰ | § | ° | ′ | " |
The real sign is typically used like a decimal point: 4$50.
For arithmetic:
| | | |  |  | | | |
| + | − | × | : | = | / (fraction) | > | < |
The fraction bar ⠐⠲ is equivalent to either a virgule or horizontal bar in print. For exponents, use the superscript sign ⠡ below.
 |  | |  |  |  | | |  |
| (digit) | (Caps) | (ALL CAPS) | (emphasis) | (super- script) | (sub- script) | (l.c.) | (orig.) | (col.) |
⠨⠨ is used to indicate that an entire word is in upper case. For a series of words in upper case, a colon is added: ⠒⠨⠨.
Emphasis corresponds to bold or italic in print. As with brackets, a second sign indicates the end of the emphasized text.
The lower-case sign ⠐ is also used to mark that a line break occurs in the middle of a mathematical expression.
⠰ restores the original reading of a character.
⠿ is optionally used as a column marker when transcribing tables, especially those with empty cells, to clarify the alignment of the data. For example, the first line of the table at the top of this section would be, in a braille text,
Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser.
The African Reference Alphabet is a largely defunct continent-wide guideline for the creation of Latin alphabets for African languages. Two variants of the initial proposal were made at a 1978 UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger. They were based on the results of several earlier conferences on the harmonization of established Latin alphabets of individual languages. The 1978 conference recommended the use of single letters for speech sounds rather than of letter sequences or of letters with diacritics. A substantial overhaul was proposed in 1982 but was rejected in a follow-up conference held in Niamey in 1984. Since then, continent-wide harmonization has been largely abandoned, because regional needs, practices and thus preferences differ greatly across Africa.
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.
English Braille, also known as Grade 2 Braille, is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of around 250 letters (phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Braille letters, such as ⠡⟨ch⟩, correspond to more than one letter in print.
Russian Braille is the braille alphabet of the Russian language. With suitable extensions, it is used for languages of neighboring countries that are written in Cyrillic in print, such as Ukrainian and Mongolian. It is based on the Latin transliteration of Cyrillic, with additional letters assigned idiosyncratically. In Russian, it is known as the Braille Script.
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.
Greek Braille is the braille alphabet of the Greek language. It is based on international braille conventions, generally corresponding to Latin transliteration. In Greek, it is known as Κώδικας Μπράιγ Kódikas Bráig "Braille Code".
The Esperanto language has a dedicated braille alphabet. One Esperanto braille magazine, Esperanta Ligilo, has been published since 1904, and another, Aŭroro, since 1920.
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.
French Braille is the original braille alphabet, and the basis of almost all others. The alphabetic order of French has become the basis of the international braille convention, used by most braille alphabets around the world. However, only the 25 basic letters of the French alphabet plus w have become internationalized; the additional letters are largely restricted to French Braille and the alphabets of some neighboring European countries.
German Braille is one of the older braille alphabets. The French-based order of the letter assignments was largely settled on with the 1878 convention that decided the standard for international braille. However, the assignments for German letters beyond the 26 of the basic Latin alphabet are mostly unrelated to French values.
Luxembourgish Braille is the braille alphabet of the Luxembourgish language. It is very close to French Braille, but uses eight-dot cells, with the extra pair of dots at the bottom of each cell to indicate capitalization and accent marks. It is the only eight-dot alphabet listed in UNESCO (2013). Children start off with the older six-dot script, then switch to eight-dot cells when they start primary school and learn the numbers.
Italian Braille is the braille alphabet of the Italian language, both in Italy and in Switzerland. It is very close to French Braille, with some differences in punctuation.
Louis Braille's original publication, Procedure for Writing Words, Music, and Plainsong in Dots (1829), credits Barbier's night writing as being the basis for the braille script. It differed in a fundamental way from modern braille: It contained nine decades (series) of characters rather than the modern five, utilizing dashes as well as dots. Braille recognized, however, that the dashes were problematic, being difficult to distinguish from the dots in practice, and those characters were abandoned in the second edition of the book.
Scandinavian Braille is a braille alphabet used, with differences in orthography and punctuation, for the languages of the mainland Nordic countries: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. In a generally reduced form it is used for Greenlandic.
Turkish Braille is the braille alphabet of the Turkish language.
Similar braille conventions are used for three languages of India and Nepal that in print are written in Devanagari script: Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali. These are part of a family of related braille alphabets known as Bharati Braille. There are apparently some differences between the Nepali braille alphabet of India and that of Nepal.
Irish Braille is the braille alphabet of the Irish language. It is augmented by specifically Irish letters for vowels with acute accents in print:
IPA Braille is the modern standard Braille encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as recognized by the International Council on English Braille.
Spanish Braille is the braille alphabet of Spanish and Galician. It is very close to French Braille, with the addition of a letter for ñ, slight modification of the accented letters and some differences in punctuation. Further conventions have been unified by the Latin American Blind Union, but differences with Spain remain.
