Arabic Braille ( ar, بِرَيْل الْعَرَبِيَّة, ') is the

braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille disp ...

alphabet for the

Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

. It descends from a braille alphabet brought to Egypt by an English missionary prior to 1878, so the letter assignments generally correspond to English Braille and to the same

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

as in other braille systems, like

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

. However, there were once multiple standards, some of which (such as Algerian Braille) were unrelated to Coptic Braille. A unified Arabic Braille was adopted in the 1950s as part of the move toward

international braille The goal of braille uniformity is to unify the braille alphabets of the world as much as possible, so that literacy in one braille alphabet readily transfers to another. Unification was first achieved by a convention of the ''International Congre ...

, and it is the standard throughout the Arab world. Other

Arabic-based alphabets The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...

have braille systems similar to Arabic Braille, such as

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Braille, but differ in some letter and diacritic assignments. Arabic Braille is read from left to right, following the international convention. Numbers are also left to right, as in printed Arabic.

Arabic Braille chart

Arabic Braille includes numerous abbreviations, some marked by dot 4 or dot 5 (the comma), which are not described here. A conference in Saudi Arabia in 2002 set up a unified braille standard for Arabic, but as of 2013 not all countries had signed up; those not adopting the standard include some Arab countries but also non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Letters

Although short-vowel letters are not diacritics in Arabic Braille, they are optional and generally omitted, just as in print Arabic. ⟨⟩ comes before the consonant; ⟨⟩ and the vowels after.

Punctuation and formatting

There are some differences in quotation marks, brackets, and underlining between traditional and unified Arabic braille conventions. ;Common punctuation ;Legacy punctuation ;Unified Arabic punctuation

External links

Arabic to Braille Translator

References

{{Arabic language French-ordered braille alphabets

Arabic Braille chart

Letters

Punctuation and formatting

See also

External links

References