Japanese Braille
Japanese braille is a braille code for writing the Japanese language. In Japanese it is known as "tenji", literally meaning "dot characters".
Normally Japanese is written using three kinds of symbols, Hanji, Hiragana and Katakana. The Hanji are in general Chinese characters. In the Japanese language there are two different pronunciations of a Hanji symbol: one is based on the original meaning and the other on the original pronunciation. In Chinese however, a word does not change when used in different contexts, so there is no conjugation of verbs like in the English language.
On the other hand, such changes are standard in Japanese and play a crucial role. For this reason the Japanese invented the Hiragana symbols (based on simplified Chinese cursive characters) to add word endings. The Hiragana form a syllable script where each symbol represents a consonant followed by a vowel. This script could be used to write Japanese in full, but that is never done.
In addition, there is a similar script, Katakana, which is based on the block form of simplified Chinese characters. This is used to represent foreign words, but is also used to write words or texts that need emphasis. This is also the script used when only a small set of characters is available.
The basic form for transcribing Japanese into Braille coding is to use the three dots in the upper left corner to represent a vowel and those in the lower right corner to represent a consonant. These are combined to give a syllable.
The diagram above shows the Braille notation, the Japanese Katakana character (when relevant) and its equivalent in the in the Latin alphabet. The Latin conversion used in this table is the one preferred by the Japanese government. There is a different one, the Hepburn Romanisation, where, for instance, "TI" is shown as "CHI". This more or less follows the actual pronunciation rather than the structural table. Digits are encoded as in standard Braille.
Further information
- Kadota, M. (1997) Japanese braille tutorial. [accessed 18/09/08].
- Tooru, I., Mamoru, F., Haruhiko, S., Katsuhito, Y. & Nobuyuki, O. (2002) Assignment of Unified Japanese Braille Code on the unicode and development of Braille registration system. Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Technical Report, 102(128), 7-12.
- Wikipedia (2008) Hiragana. [accessed 18/09/08].
- Wikipedia (2008) Kanji. [accessed 18/09/08].
- Wikipedia (2008) Katakana. [accessed 18/09/08].
Acknowledgements
- Wikipedia (2008) Japanese Braille. [accessed 18/09/08].
- Winter, D. (n.d.) Scripts for the blind. [accessed 18/09/08].