Burmese Braille is the

braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille disp ...

alphabet of languages of Burma written in the

Burmese script Burmese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia * Burmese people * Burmese language * Burmese alphabet * Burmese cuisine * Burmese culture Animals * Burmese cat * Burmese chicken * Burmese ( ...

, including Burmese and Karen. Letters that may not seem at first glance to correspond to international norms are more recognizable when traditional romanization is considered. For example, ''s'' is rendered ''th'', which is how it was romanized when Burmese Braille was developed (and is how it often still is romanized); similarly ''c'' and ''j'' as ''s'' and ''z''.

History

The first braille alphabet for Burmese was developed by Father William Henry Jackson ca. 1918. There was no provision for the voiced aspirate series of consonants (''gh, jh, dh, bh''), nor for the retroflex (''tt'' etc.), and Jackson provided distinct letters for complex onsets such as ''ky, hm'' and for various syllable rimes (''ok, ein, aung,'' etc.), with no regard to how they are written in the print Burmese alphabet. These aspects have all been changed, as have several of the letters for the values which were retained. However, some of the old letters, unusual by international standards, remain, such as for ''ng'' and for ''i''.

Charts

Print letters

The letters in print Burmese transcribe consonants and, in syllable-initial position, vowels. The consonants each have a corresponding letter in braille, but the initial (stand-alone) vowels in print are in braille all written plus the letter for the appropriate diacritic (see next section). The consonant ''ny'' has two forms in print which are distinct in braille as well.World Braille Usage
, UNESCO, 2013 :

Stacked consonants

The stacking of consonants (conjuncts) in print is indicated with in braille. That is, Burmese Braille has two ''

virama 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 vir� ...

s'', one corresponding to print ''virama'' (see next section), and one corresponding to stacking. For example, ''kambha'' "world" is written .The sources used for this article are not explicit on the order of the braille letters.

Print diacritics

The diacritics in print, which transcribe both vowels and consonants, are rendered as follows in Karen Braille.Karen Braille chart
at the LoC is used to mark syllable- or word-initial vowels, which have distinct letters in the Burmese print alphabet. For example,

Numbers

Burmese numerals are represented as follows:

Punctuation

The following punctuation is specific to Burmese. (See Burmese alphabet#Punctuation for an explanation.) Western punctuation presumably uses Western braille conventions.

References

{{burmese language French-ordered braille alphabets Burmese language