The Esperanto language has a dedicated braille alphabet. One Esperanto braille magazine, Esperanta Ligilo, has been published since 1904, and another, Aŭroro, since 1920.
| Esperanto Braille | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Script type | alphabet
|
Print basis | Esperanto alphabet |
| Languages | Esperanto |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Braille
|
Alphabet edit
The basic braille alphabet is extended for the print letters with diacritics. The circumflex is marked by adding dot 6 (lower right) to the base letter: ⠩ ĉ, ⠻ ĝ, ⠳ ĥ, ⠺ ĵ, ⠮ ŝ. Therefore, the letter ĵ has the same form as the unused French/English Braille letter ⠺ w; to write a w in a foreign name, dot 3 is added: ⠾ w [1] (see next section). Esperanto ŭ is made by reflecting u, so that dot 1 becomes dot 4: ⠬ ŭ. The alphabet is thus as follows.[2]
 a |
 b |
 c |
 ĉ |
 d |
 e |
 f |
 g |
 ĝ |
 h |
 ĥ |
 i |
 j |
 ĵ |
 k |
 l |
 m |
 n |
 o |
 p |
 r |
 s |
 ŝ |
 t |
 u |
 ŭ |
 v |
 z |
Contracted braille is in limited use.[3]
Transcribing foreign letters edit
Beside the basic-Latin foreign letters q, w, x, y, there are dedicated letters for the umlauted vowels that occur in print German, ä, ö, ü:
 q |
 w |
 x |
 y |
 ä |
 ö |
 ü |
Additional accented letters in other languages are handled by separate braille cells for the diacritics. These do not have a one-to-one correspondence with print:
 ◌́ (and ő, ű from ö, ü) |
 ◌̀, ◌̄ |
 ◌̃ |
 ◌̂, ◌̌ |
 ◌̈, ◌̇ |
 ◌̊, ◌̆ |
 ◌̧, ◌̨, ◌̣, ◌̩ |
 ◌̸, ◌̵, etc. |
These conventions are used for foreign names adapted to Esperanto Braille. Unassimilated text in another braille alphabet is indicated by the code ⠐⠂.
Punctuation edit
- Single punctuation
 (space) |
 , |
 ' (abbr.) |
. |
 ? |
 ! |
 ; |
: |
| * |
 / |
... |
 - |
— | |||
The apostrophe and abbreviation point are both transcribed ⠄, which is distinct from the period/stop, ⠲. A series of colons, ⠒⠒⠒, is a common dinkus for dividing sections of texts.
- Paired punctuation
 ... (outer quotes) |
... (inner quotes) |
 ... ( ... ) |
... [ ... ] |
Quotation marks in print Esperanto are highly variable, and tend to follow the conventions of the country a text is published in. This is irrelevant for printing in braille.
Numbers edit
The apostrophe/abbreviation point ⠄ is used to group digits within numbers, like the comma in English. In both print and braille Esperanto, the comma is used as the decimal mark, so:
- print English 100,000.00
- = print Esperanto 100 000,00
- = braille ⠼⠁⠚⠚⠄⠚⠚⠚⠂⠚⠚.
Formatting edit
Capitals are only marked for proper names. They are not used at the beginning of a sentence.
 (digit) |
 (caps) |
 (emph.) |
... .. (span emphasis) | ||
| ... (alternative span emphasis) |
... (foreign braille text) | ||||
For emphasis (bold or italics in print), a simple ⠸ is used to mark each of one to three words. For longer emphatic text, there are two formats: Either a colon precedes the simple emphatic sign, ⠒⠸, and an additional sign ⠸ is placed before the last emphasized word, or the sign ⠠⠄ is placed before and after the emphasized text.
In contracted (grade 2) braille, a different sign is used for capital letters, ⠠ (dot 6). As in most braille orthographies, proper names are not contracted, and words preceded by this sign are not contracted in Esperanto Braille.
References edit
- ^ "Redirecting to Google Groups".
- ^ "World Braille Usage". UNESCO. 2013. Archived from the original on 2014-09-08. Retrieved 2021-06-14.
- ^ Esperanta stenografio, Nizhny Novgorod, 2003