Several

braille Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...

alphabets are used in South Africa. For English,

Unified English Braille Unified English Braille Code (UEBC, formerly UBC, now usually simply UEB) is an English language Braille code standard, developed to encompass the wide variety of literary and technical material in use in the English-speaking world today, in unifor ...

has been adopted. Nine other languages have been written in braille:

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

, Ndebele,

Sesotho Sotho (), also known as ''Sesotho'' (), Southern Sotho, or ''Sesotho sa Borwa'' is a Southern Bantu languages, Southern Bantu language spoken in Lesotho as its national language and South Africa where it is an official language. Like all Ba ...

Northern Sotho Sepedi, also known as Northern Sotho, is one of South Africa’s twelve official languages and belongs to the Bantu language family, specifically the Sotho-Tswana group. The language is spoken mainly in Limpopo Province, and to a lesser exten ...

, Swazi,

Tswana Tswana may refer to: * Tswana people, the Bantu languages, Bantu speaking people in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern Africa regions * Tswana language, the language spoken by the (Ba)Tswana people * Tswanaland, ...

Venda Venda ( ), officially the Republic of Venda (; ), was a Bantustan in northern South Africa. It was fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while, to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black hom ...

Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...

, and Zulu.''Ethnologue'' 17 reports that

Tsonga Tsonga may refer to: * Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa * Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa. * Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) ...

is also written in braille. All print alphabets are restricted to the basic Latin alphabet, with diacritics in some cases; the braille alphabets are likewise basic braille with additional letters to render the diacritics. : The Nguni languages – Ndebele, Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu – have no diacritics and will not be discussed further. The braille diacritics are shared by South African languages and are described in the sections that follow. Punctuation for all South African braille alphabets is as in

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 ...

Afrikaans Braille

Afrikaans has braille cells for acute, ;

grave A grave is a location where a cadaver, dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is burial, buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of buria ...

, ;

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...

, ; and diaeresis, : : ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú'', ''ý'' : ''à'', ''è'' : ''ê'', ''î'', ''ô'', ''û'' : ''ë'', ''ï'', ''ö'', ''ü''

Sesotho and Tswana Braille

Sesotho and Tswana treat the

caron A caron or háček ( ), is a diacritic mark () placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term ''caron'', while linguists prefer ...

(haček) as an acute: : ''ê'', ''ô'', : ''š''

Venda Braille

Venda has a unique letter, , for the subscript circumflex, and treats ''ṅ'' as acute: : ''ḓ'', ''ḽ'', ''ṋ'', ''ṅ'', ''ṱ''

References

*UNESCO (2013
World Braille Usage
3rd edition. {{Braille French-ordered braille alphabets Afrikaans Nguni languages Sotho-Tswana languages