Similar
braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are Blindness, blind, Deafblindness, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on Paper embossing, embossed paper ...
conventions are used for three languages of India and Nepal that in print are written in
Devanagari script
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
:
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
,
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
, and
Nepali. These are part of a family of related braille alphabets known as
Bharati Braille
Bharati braille ( ), or Bharatiya Braille ( hi, भारती ब्रेल ' "Indian braille"), is a largely unified braille script for writing the languages of India. When India gained independence, eleven braille scripts were in use, in d ...
. There are apparently some differences between the Nepali braille alphabet of India and that of Nepal.
System
Although basically alphabetic, Devanagari Braille retains one aspect of Indian
abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
s, in that the default vowel ''a'' is not written unless it occurs at the beginning of a word or before a vowel. For example, braille (the consonant ''K'') renders print ''ka'', and braille (''TH''), print ''tha''. To indicate that a consonant is not followed by a vowel (as when followed by another consonant, or at the end of a syllable), a ''
halant
Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit virā ...
'' (vowel-cancelling) prefix is used: (''∅–K'') is ''k'', and (''∅–TH'') is ''th''. (When writing in Hindi, the ''halant'' is generally omitted at the end of a word, following the convention in print.) However, unlike in an abugida, there are no vowel diacritics in Devanagari Braille: Vowels are written with full letters following the consonant regardless of their order in print. For example, in print the vowel ''i'' is prefixed to a consonant in a reduced diacritic form, ''ki'', but in braille it follows in its full form: (''K–I''), equivalent to writing for ''ki'' in print. Thus ''klika'' is written in braille as (''∅–K–L–I–K''). The one time when a non-initial ''a'' is written in braille is when it is followed by another vowel. In this environment the ''a'' must be written to indicate that it exists, as otherwise the subsequent vowel will be read as following the consonant immediately. Thus a true ''kai'' in print is rendered in braille as (''K–A–I'').
Apart from ''kṣ'' and ''jñ'', which each have their own braille letter, Devanagari Braille does not handle
conjuncts. Print conjuncts are rendered instead with the ''halant'' in braille. Devanagari braille is thus equivalent to Grade-1 English braille, though there are plans to extend it to conjuncts.
Alphabet
Not all of the letters used for
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
are reported for
Nepali in
Nepal
Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...
.
Codas
Pointing
The Bharati point, , is used to derive the syllabic consonants. Long syllabic consonants are prefixed by point-6, which also transcribes the visarga.
The pointing diacritic is also used for consonants that are derived with a point in print. Most of these consonants were introduced from
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
:
There are irregularities, however. ''f'' and ''z'', which are found in both Persian and English loans, are transcribed with
English 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 Bra ...
(and international) and , as shown in the chart in the previous section, while the internal allophonic developments of ''ṛ'' and ''ṛh'' are respectively an independent letter in braille and a derivation from that letter rather than from the base letter in print.
This is also where, at least according to UNESCO (2013), Hindi Braille and Indian Urdu Braille diverge.
Urdu Braille
According to UNESCO (2013),[World Braille Usage](_blank)
UNESCO, 2013 there are di ...
(see) has several additional derivations along these lines, which are not possible in print Devanagari. In Urdu Braille, and are assigned their English/international values of ''x'' and ''q'', replacing and . Also, ''jñ'' is used for ''ḥ'', and (not found in Devanagari Braille) is used for ''ʿ'', a role played by the letter in Devanagari Urdu but not found in Hindi.
Nepali punctuation
Braille as used in Nepal has some mostly minor differences from that used for Nepali in India. This may extend to punctuation. The asterisk in Nepal, , differs from the used in India, unless this is a copy error in UNESCO (2013). Single quotation marks and additional brackets are noted for Nepal but not for India:
These differ from the same punctuation in
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
.
Text
The following is the sample text in the
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
article, of Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
:
:
:⠀
:
:
:''Anucched 1 — Sabhī manuṣyoṃ ko gaurav aur adhikāroṃ ke māmle meṃ janmajāt svatantratā aur samāntā prāpt haiṃ.''
:''Unheṃ buddhi aur antarātmā kī den prāpt hai aur paraspar unheṃ bhāīcāre ke bhāv se bartāv karnā cāhiye.''
See also
*
Bharati braille
Bharati braille ( ), or Bharatiya Braille ( hi, भारती ब्रेल ' "Indian braille"), is a largely unified braille script for writing the languages of India. When India gained independence, eleven braille scripts were in use, in d ...
*
Urdu Braille
According to UNESCO (2013),[World Braille Usage](_blank)
UNESCO, 2013 there are di ...
References
{{marathi language topics
Bharati braille alphabets
Hindi
Marathi language
Nepali language
Devanagari