According to UNESCO (2013),World Braille Usage UNESCO, 2013 there are different
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 ...
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 ...
, while the Pakistani alphabet is based on
Persian Braille
Persian Braille (Persian: بریل فارسی) is the braille alphabet for the Persian language. It is largely compatible with Arabic Braille, which may be found (in uncontracted form) within Persian Braille texts. There are a few additional Pers ...
.
Differences from Persian and Bharati Braille
Besides the addition of Urdu-specific consonants analogous to the additional letters in the print
Urdu alphabet
The Urdu alphabet (), is the right-to-left alphabet used for Urdu. It is a modification of the Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic script. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter c ...
compared to the
Persian alphabet
The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...
, Pakistani Urdu Braille differs from Persian Braille in the transcription of the print letter ''ž'', which is written as a digraph in Urdu braille rather than as Persian , which in Urdu is used for ''ḍ''.
Indian Urdu Braille differs from other Bharati braille alphabets in having several letters borrowed from Persian, such as for ''q'' (Bharati ''kṣ''), for ''ḥ'' (Bharati ''jñ''), and for ''‘'' (Bharati ''ḻ''). Another such letter, for ''x'', is shared with
Gurmukhi Braille
Punjabi Braille is the braille alphabet used in India for Punjabi. It is one of the Bharati braille alphabets, and largely conforms to the letter values of the other Bharati alphabets.
ਖ਼ ''x'' but with no other Bharati alphabet, where is otherwise the vowel ''o''.
Alphabets
:''Note: It is not clear if these are written right-to-left or left-to-right. The directionality of some of the digraphs may have gotten confused.''
It is not clear if vowels in Indian Urdu Braille follow pronunciation and their
Devanagari Braille
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 a ...
equivalents, or print orthography.
Contractions
Pakistani Urdu Braille has several contractions beyond the aspirated consonants:
: , , ,A duplication in the UNESCO reference, presumably an error. may be instead, in which case is probably also a mistake for . It appears that UNESCO got the letters backwards for several of the contractions. , , , , , , .Written ''hamza–alif'', but labeled ''alif–hamza''.
Hindi Braille
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 des ...
*
Punjabi Braille
Punjabi Braille is the braille alphabet used in India for Punjabi. It is one of the Bharati braille alphabets, and largely conforms to the letter values of the other Bharati alphabets.