Tibetan Braille

Tibetan Braille is the Braille alphabet for writing the Tibetan language. It was invented in 1992 by German social worker Sabriye Tenberken.^[1] It is based on German braille, with some extensions from international usage. As in print, the vowel a is not written.

Despite Tibetan and Dzongkha (Bhutanese) using the same alphabet in print, Tibetan Braille differs significantly from Dzongkha Braille, which is closer to international norms.

Alphabet

Tibetan Braille follows print orthography. (See Tibetan script.) This is often a poor match for how words are pronounced. Each syllable is rendered in the following order:

pre-consonant, superscript consonant, head consonant, subscript consonant, vowel, post-consonant(s)^[2]

The invariable consonants are:^[3]

Consonant	ka	kha	ga	nga	ca	cha	ja	nya
Print	ཀ	ཁ	ག	ང	ཅ	ཆ	ཇ	ཉ
Braille

Consonant	ta	tha	da	na	pa	pha	ba	ma
Print	ཏ	ཐ	ད	ན	པ	ཕ	བ	མ
Braille

Consonant	tsa	tsha	dza	zha	za	'a	sha	ha
Print	ཙ	ཚ	ཛ	ཞ	ཟ	འ	ཤ	ཧ
Braille

Several consonants, wa, ya, ra, la, and sa, are provided with forms corresponding to the superscript and subscript positions in print:^[4]

Consonant		wa	ya	ra	la	sa
Print		ཝ	ཡ	ར	ལ	ས
Braille	as base letter
	as superscript	–	–
	as subscript					–

The assignments for zh and z also match international conventions, as those letters are pronounced like sh and s. Several of the assignments which do not match international braille have the values of German Braille: ⠹ ch for c (ch), ⠚ j for y [j], ⠵ z [ts] for tsh, ⠎ s [z] for z, ⠱ sch [ʃ] for sh [ʃ], ⠮ ß [s] for s. Letters which are not basic to the German alphabet (c, q, x, y) have been reassigned. Several of the aspirated consonants (ch, th, ph) are equivalent to the corresponding unaspirated consonant with an extra dot in the third row.

The short vowel "a" is inherent in the head (main) consonant, and is not written explicitly. When a vowel occurs at the beginning of a word, it is carried by a null consonant ཨ ⟨⠁⟩:

Vowels	a	i	u	e	o
Print (on ཨ )	ཨ	ཨི	ཨུ	ཨེ	ཨོ
Braille

Numbers and punctuation

Digits are as in English Braille. Basic punctuation:^[3]

Print	,	;	.
Braille

References

This page was last edited on 31 October 2023, at 19:26