Tibetan Braille


Tibetan Braille is the braille alphabet for writing the Tibetan language. It was invented in 1992 by German socialworker Sabriye Tenberken. It is based on German braille, with some extensions from international usage. As in print, the vowel a is not written.
Despite Tibetan and Dzongkha using the same alphabet in print, Tibetan Braille differs significantly from Dzongkha Braille, which is closer to international norms.

Alphabet

Tibetan Braille follows print orthography. This is often a poor match for how words are pronounced. Each syllable is rendered in the following order:
The invariable consonants are:
Consonantkakhagangacachajanya
Printཀ ཁ ག ང ཅ ཆ ཇ ཉ
Braille

Consonanttathadanapaphabama
Printཏ ཐ ད ན པ ཕ བ མ
Braille

Consonanttsatshadzazhaza'ashaha
Printཙ ཚ ཛ ཞ ཟ འ ཤ ཧ
Braille

Several consonants, wa, ya, ra, la, and sa, are provided with forms corresponding to the superscript and subscript positions in print:
The assignments for zh and z also match international conventions, as those letters are pronounced like sh and s. Several of the assignments which do not match international braille have the values of German Braille: ch for c , j for y, z for tsh, s for z, sch for sh, ß for s. Letters which are not basic to the German alphabet have been reassigned. Several of the aspirated consonants are equivalent to the corresponding unaspirated consonant with an extra dot in the third row.
The short vowel "a" is inherent in the head consonant, and is not written explicitly. When a vowel occurs at the beginning of a word, it is carried by a null consonant ཨ :
Vowelsaiueo
Print
ཨ ཨི ཨུ ཨེ ཨོ
Braille

Numbers and punctuation

Digits are as in English Braille. Basic punctuation:
Print,;.
Braille