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.

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	ㄅ	ㄆ	ㄇ	ㄈ	ㄉ	ㄊ	ㄋ	ㄌ	ㄍ ㄐ	ㄎ ㄑ	ㄏ ㄒ	ㄓ	ㄔ	ㄕ	ㄖ	ㄗ	ㄘ	ㄙ
Braille

Finals[edit]

The finals approximate international braille values for several of the basic vowels (⠢ e (o), ⠊ yi, ⠕ wo, ⠥ wu, ⠬ yü, ⠳ 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 ㄚ e/o ㄛ ㄜ ㄝ ai ㄞ ei ㄟ ao ㄠ ou ㄡ an ㄢ en ㄣ ang ㄤ eng ㄥ

Pinyin Bopomofo Braille yi, -i* ㄧ 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 ㄨ 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 ㄩ yue, -üe ㄩㄝ yuan, -üan ㄩㄢ yun, -ün ㄩㄣ yong, -iong ㄩㄥ er ㄦ

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:

时间不早了！ (時間不早了！)

⠱⠂⠛⠩⠁⠀⠃⠥⠆⠀⠵⠖⠄⠀⠇⠢⠰⠂

⠱⠂⠛⠩⠁⠀	⠃⠥⠆⠀	⠵⠖⠄⠀	⠇⠢⠰⠂
时间	不	早	了！
Shíjiān	bù	zǎo	le!
time	not	early	PFV

草地上的花是风吹开的。

⠉⠖⠄⠙⠊⠆⠀⠱⠦⠀⠙⠀⠓⠿⠁⠀⠱⠆⠀⠋⠼⠀⠟⠺⠅⠪⠀⠙⠐⠆

⠉⠖⠄⠙⠊⠆⠀	⠱⠦⠀	⠙⠀	⠓⠿⠁⠀	⠱⠆⠀	⠋⠼⠀	⠟⠺⠅⠪⠀	⠙⠐⠆
草地	上	的	花	是	风	吹开	的。
cǎodì	shang	de	huā	shi	feng	chuikai	de.
grass	above	which	flower	is	wind	[a]	by

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]

• Two-cell Chinese Braille
• Taiwanese Braille
• Cantonese Braille
• Moon type is a simplification of the Latin alphabet for embossing. An adaptation for Ningbo-reading blind people has been proposed.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Grotz, J. (Aug 1991). "The necessary reform of Chinese Braille writing". Rehabilitation (Stuttgart). 30 (3): 153–5. PMID 1947424.

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]

External links[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.

(Audio help · More spoken articles)

• Omniglot: Braille for Chinese
• 学点盲文
• Braille at the Dongli Disabled Persons' Federation Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine