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Japanese for the blind

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:13 am
by Tetsuwan Penguin
We know that there are three different scripts used to write Japanese. Well actually there are four, because you can also write Japanese in Braille. The "standard" Braille 'alphabet' is used, but now it stands for Kana characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Braille

Only one Braille script is used, IE: it would map to BOTH Hiragona and Katakana characters with the same 'sound'.
The script is known as tenji (点字?) or "dot characters".

Image
Here is a can of dry beer marked as 'sake' in Braille.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 1:02 am
by Kitty Lue
That's cool. :) I wonder how they use the "standard" alphabet (assuming that means it uses the same braille alphabet as English) for Japanese. I don't remember all the details and I know there were some sound/frenetic? abreviations in Braille, but it seems like all of the English letters had their matching Braille symbol. Or do they use the same Braille alphabet, but the "letters" are assigned different sounds for Japanese?

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:25 pm
by Tetsuwan Penguin
In Japanese the Braille characters are "mapped" to kana characters, the details were in the article I posted the link to. So English speakers reading something in Japanese Braille would probably be confused as they'ed likely be reading nonsense random English letters.