Different types of braille?

[Kevin Gaisford]

This may seem like a silly question but here goes............

Is Braille a universal language? who a sentence be the same in French as in
English?
also are there different grades of Braille?

Many thanks.
--
Kevin Gaisford
Kevin.G...@tinyworld.co.uk

[Chris McMillan]

In article <3b796...@news2.vip.uk.com>, Kevin Gaisford
<kevin.g...@tinyworld.co.uk> writes

>This may seem like a silly question but here goes............
>
>Is Braille a universal language? who a sentence be the same in French as in
>English?

Deep breath.

Each country takes the braille symbols and uses them according to their
own language, so while you might be able to work out the letters 'a' to
'z' in another language (assuming the language you chose was based on
the western alphabet), you'd soon get bogged down otherwise.

>
>also are there different grades of Braille?
>

Yes: grade one literally is a translation letter by letter from the
print. Grade 2 which is what most of us learn to use, is a form of
shorthand in that the most common words are shortened in various ways.
Sadly, the sentence construction is just about as complicated as using a
foreign language, and you have to learn to spell each word as its
written in braille and in print. And then there's grade 3, which
includes computer codes and the like.

I should say that braille for grades one and two uses six dots, grade 3
utilises 8 dots (as did the code for Hong Kong at one time).

I did once have the Mandarin code written down and I've seen codes for
Indian and Pakistani languages when I did a braille exhibition. Sadly
one of the 'helpers' threw away my treasured bits of paper and I've not
been able to get the RNIB here in the UK to give me them again.

Does that help at all?

Sincerely, Chris (*not* a fluent user of same)
>

--
Chris McMillan

[Craig]

Cool, I've never even realised that there's 7 or 8 dot braille and I've been
using braille for about 15 years - all sounds a bit mad to me lol

I assume there are special machines to produce this

Craig

[Brian Gaff using OE]

I was tempted t say, its all Greek to me, Kevin, but I am not sure why...

Anyway,yes, there are different Braille codes with contractions for common
used letters in each language. I have not specific details, but I think that
is the answer.

Grades, yes, Grade 1 is simply a letter for letter replacement for typing,
but grade 2 and in some places grade 3 use special characters as a kind of
shorthand for groups of characters or words. i.e., contractions and word
signs.

Then there is computer Braille, 8 dot Braille and and... my brain hurts.

Brian

--
bri...@bgserv.demon.co.uk

Streetlights glint on the wettened street
tyres screech to the music's beat
people walk, but they never meet
under the crystal moon

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