Monday, September 29, 2008

Cantonese Braille

Cantonese Braille is a Cantonese language version of Braille in Hong Kong. It is locally referred as ''tim chi'' , ''dot character'', or more commonly, ''tuk chi'' , ''raised character''. Although Cantonese is written in Chinese characters, the Cantonese Braille is coded by purely Cantonese phonetics, with some special codes for s, and numerals and Roman alphabets from original Braille. It can be mixed with text.

Braille



Braille is coded by arranging 6 dots into a Braille cell of 2 columns and 3 rows. Each dot is numbered from 1-6; the left column is 1, 2 and 3 from top to down and right 4, 5 and 6. If a dot is used, it would be punched on paper or raised on plate for blinds, or shaded black in visual representation. With the coming of the electronic age, Braille is extended to 8 dots by adding seventh and eighth dot at the bottom for mapping ASCII.

In Cantonese Braille, the two extra dots are ignored and not shown.

See for details on using Braille.

Unicode rendering table


Main Chart


The following charts shows the Braille code used by Cantonese Braille. From traditional Chinese phonetics, the pronunciation of a Chinese character can divided in three parts, namely, initial, final and tone. For example, the Chinese character ''pun4'' , with its initial ''p'', final ''un'' and tone ''4'', is translated into Cantonese Braille ???. Usually, there is no space between Chinese characters until the end of a sentence.

For details about Cantonese phonetics, see .



Chinese Punctuation



Mixing with English text

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