Irish Braille

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Irish Braille
Type
alphabet
Languages Irish
Parent systems
Braille
Print basis
Irish alphabet

Irish Braille is the braille alphabet of the Irish language. It is augmented by specifically Irish letters for vowels that take acute accents in print:

⠯ (braille pattern dots-12346) ⠿ (braille pattern dots-123456) ⠷ (braille pattern dots-12356) ⠮ (braille pattern dots-2346) ⠾ (braille pattern dots-23456)
á é í ó ú

é and ú are only coincidentally the French Braille letters for é and ú: They are simply the braille letters of the third decade after z, assigned to print in alphabetical order.

Irish Braille also uses some of the Grade-1½ shortcuts of English Braille,

⠡ (braille pattern dots-16) ⠣ (braille pattern dots-126) ⠩ (braille pattern dots-146) ⠹ (braille pattern dots-1456) ⠫ (braille pattern dots-1246) ⠻ (braille pattern dots-12456) ⠌ (braille pattern dots-34) ⠬ (braille pattern dots-346) ⠜ (braille pattern dots-345) ⠂ (braille pattern dots-2) ⠒ (braille pattern dots-25) ⠲ (braille pattern dots-256) ⠤ (braille pattern dots-36) ⠢ (braille pattern dots-26) ⠔ (braille pattern dots-35)
ch gh sh th ed er st ing ar* ea con dis com en in

only has the value ar in prose. In poetry, it is used to mark a new line, like "/" in print.

These shortcuts are not used across elements of compound words. For example, in uiscerian (uisce-rian) "aqueduct", e-r is spelled out, as is s-t in trastomhas (tras-tomhas) "diameter". There are no special braille letters for dotted consonants. The letter h is used instead, as in modern print. A shortcut may be used even when the final consonant is lenited with h; comh, for example, is written com-h.

The only word-sign is the letter s for agus "and".

The letters j k q v w x y z were not originally part of the Irish alphabet, but apart from w they have been introduced through English loans, so they occur in Irish Braille. Punctuation is the same as in English Braille.

References[edit]