Japanese Braille
Japanese Braille is the braille script of the Japanese language. It is based on the original braille script, though the connection is tenuous. In Japanese it is known as tenji, literally "dot characters". It transcribes Japanese more or less as it would be written in the hiragana or katakana syllabaries, without any provision for writing kanji.
Japanese Braille is a vowel-based abugida. That is, the glyphs are syllabic, but unlike kana they contain separate symbols for consonant and vowel, and the vowel takes primacy. The vowels are written in the upper left corner and may be used alone. The consonants are written in the lower right corner and cannot occur alone. However, the semivowel y is indicated by dot 4, one of the vowel dots, and the vowel combination is dropped to the bottom of the cell. When this dot is written in isolation, it indicates that the following syllable has a medial y, as in mya. Syllables beginning with w are indicated by dropping the vowel dots to the bottom of the cell without additional consonant dots.
Braille for kana
In Japanese Braille, bare vowels are assigned to braille patterns that occupy the upper-left half of the cell :. While the first three vowels are the same as the numerals 1, 2, and 3, this pattern does not continue, and the cells representing other kana have no apparent connection to international values or numerical order. Common punctuation marks tend to follow standard international values, with several doing double-duty with the w- series of kana braille. Beyond the bare vowels, all other kana use the vowel series, called dan, with each gyō represented either by adding specific dots, lowering the dot positions of the dan vowel patterns within the cell, or both.| あ段 a dan | い段 i dan | う段 u dan | え段 e dan | お段 o dan | - | |
| あ行 a gyō bare vowels | あ a | い i | う u | え e | お o | - |
| あ行 a gyō bare vowels | - | |||||
| あ行 a gyō bare vowels | - | |||||
| か行 ka gyō: k- dan + dot 6 | か ka | き ki | く ku | け ke | こ ko | - |
| か行 ka gyō: k- dan + dot 6 | - | |||||
| か行 ka gyō: k- dan + dot 6 | - | |||||
| さ行 sa gyō: s- dan + dots 5&6 | さ sa | し shi | す su | せ se | そ so | - |
| さ行 sa gyō: s- dan + dots 5&6 | - | |||||
| さ行 sa gyō: s- dan + dots 5&6 | - | |||||
| た行 ta gyō: t- dan + dots 3&5 | た ta | ち chi | つ tsu | て te | と to | - |
| た行 ta gyō: t- dan + dots 3&5 | - | |||||
| た行 ta gyō: t- dan + dots 3&5 | - | |||||
| な行 na gyō: n- dan + dot 3 | な na | に ni | ぬ nu | ね ne | の no | - |
| な行 na gyō: n- dan + dot 3 | - | |||||
| な行 na gyō: n- dan + dot 3 | - | |||||
| は行 ha gyō: h- dan + dots 3&6 | は ha | ひ hi | ふ fu | へ he | ほ ho | - |
| は行 ha gyō: h- dan + dots 3&6 | - | |||||
| は行 ha gyō: h- dan + dots 3&6 | - | |||||
| ま行 ma gyō: m- dan + dots 3,5&6 | ま ma | み mi | む mu | め me | も mo | ん n |
| ま行 ma gyō: m- dan + dots 3,5&6 | ||||||
| ま行 ma gyō: m- dan + dots 3,5&6 | ||||||
| や行 ya gyō: y- dan lowered + dot 4 | や ya | ゆ yu | よ yo | -y- | ||
| や行 ya gyō: y- dan lowered + dot 4 | ||||||
| や行 ya gyō: y- dan lowered + dot 4 | ||||||
| ら行 ra gyō: r- dan + dot 5 | ら ra | り ri | る ru | れ re | ろ ro | - |
| ら行 ra gyō: r- dan + dot 5 | - | |||||
| ら行 ra gyō: r- dan + dot 5 | - | |||||
| わ行 wa gyō: w- dan lowered | わ wa | ゐ wi | ゑ we | を wo | -w- | |
| わ行 wa gyō: w- dan lowered | ||||||
| わ行 wa gyō: w- dan lowered |
The patterns for adding yōon to a mora can be added to the modifiers for dakuten and handakuten as a compound kana modifier, and the ya gyō braille series is based on the yōon dot pattern. The symbol for ん syllabic "n" is based on its historical derivation from む mu.
Other symbols
In kana, a small tsu, called sokuon, is used to indicate that the following consonant is geminate, and in interjections as a glottal stop. In katakana only, a long vowel is indicated with a horizontal stroke called a chōon. This also looks like a half dash in braille:| sokuon | chōon |
The placement of these blocks mirrors the equivalent kana: the sokuon indicates that the following consonant is geminate, whereas the chōon indicates that the preceding vowel is long.
In kana, the voiced consonants g, z, d, b are derived from the voiceless consonants k, s, t, h by adding a diacritic called dakuten to the kana, as in ぎ gi; in foreign words, vu is written by adding this to the vowel u. Similarly, p is derived from h by adding a small circle, handakuten. Two kana are fused into a single syllable by writing the second small, as in きゃ kya from ki + ya; this is called yōon.
In Japanese Braille, the signs for these are prefixes. That is, the order is dakuten + ki for ぎ gi. When more than one occurs in a single syllable, they are combined in a single prefix block, as the yōon-dakuten used for ぎゃ gya.
| dakuten | handakuten | yōon | yōon + dakuten | yōon + handakuten |
The yōon prefix uses the dot that represents y in the blocks ya, yu, yo. When placed before ka, ku, ko, it produces kya, kyu, kyo. Likewise, the yōon-dakuten prefix before ka, ku, ko creates gya, gyu, gyo. And so on for the other consonants.
Unlike kana, which uses a subscript e, in braille the -ye in foreign borrowings is written with yōon and the kana from the e row: that is, kye, she, che, nye, hye, mye, rye, voiced gye, je, bye, and plosive pye are written with the yōon prefixes plus ke, se, te, ne, he, me, re. The syllable ye is written yōon plus e.
There is also a prefix for medial -w- called gōyōon. When combined with ka, it produces the obsolete syllable kwa. It may also be fused with the voicing prefix for gwa. For foreign borrowings, this extends to kwi, kwe, kwo and gwa, gwi, gwe, gwo. Gōyōon may also be combined with the vowels i, e, o for foreign wi, we, wo ; with ha, hi, he, ho for fa, fi, fe, fo and for va, vi, ve, vo; and with ta, chi, te, to for tsa, tsi, tse, tso. These two prefixes are identical to the question mark and full stop.
| gōyōon | gōyōon + dakuten |
These all parallel usage in kana. However, there are additional conventions which are unique to braille. Yōon and yōon-dakuten are also added to chi and shi to write ti, di and si, zi found in foreign borrowings; similarly gōyōon and gōyōon-dakuten are added to tsu to write tu, du. This differs from the system used in kana, where the base syllables are te and to respectively, and a subscript vowel i or u is added.
In an assignment that is counter-intuitive in kana, yōon + handakuten is prefixed to tsu, yu, yo to produce tyu, fyu, fyo in foreign words, and voiced for dyu, vyu, vyo. The latter—yōon + dakuten + handakuten, is impossible in kana:
| yōon + dakuten + handakuten |