Portuguese Braille 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 displ ...
alphabet of the
Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, ...
, both in Portugal and in Brazil. It is very close to
French Braille
French Braille is the original braille alphabet, and the basis of all others. The alphabetic order of French has become the basis of the international braille convention, used by most braille alphabets around the world. However, only the 25 basic ...
, with slight modification of the accented letters and some differences in punctuation.
Alphabet
The French Braille letters for vowels with a grave accent in print tend to be used for vowels with an acute accents in Portuguese Braille. (See
French Braille#Similar alphabets. The French vowels ''œ'' and ''ä'' are used for the Portuguese nasal vowels ''õ'' and ''ã''. In numerical order, the letters are:
:
Punctuation
Punctuation is nearly identical to that of
Spanish Braille
Spanish Braille is the braille alphabet of Spanish and Galician. It is very close to French Braille, with the addition of a letter for ''ñ'', slight modification of the accented letters and some differences in punctuation. Further conventions ...
.
Single punctuation:
The
en dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
is written on the middle dots, while the em dash is written on the bottom dots.
Paired punctuation:
The two sets of parentheses and square brackets are alternatives. Many sources give only one, usually the second.
Numbers
Digits are the international norm of the first ten letters of the alphabet marked by .
The number sign takes the place of spaces within a number such as a serial number. For example, ''A (46 1)'' is transcribed .
Additional symbols:
The ''real'' sign is typically used like a decimal point: 4$50.
For arithmetic:
The fraction bar is equivalent to either a virgule or horizontal bar in print. For exponents, use the superscript sign below.
Formatting
is used to indicate that an entire word is in upper case. For a series of words in upper case, a colon is added: .
''Emphasis'' corresponds to bold or italic in print. As with brackets, a second sign indicates the end of the emphasized text.
The lower-case sign is also used to mark that a line break occurs in the middle of a mathematical expression.
restores the original reading of a character.
is optionally used as a column marker when transcribing tables, especially those with empty cells, to clarify the alignment of the data. For example, the first line of the table at the top of this section would be, in a braille text,
:
References
*UNESCO (2013
World Braille Usage 3rd edition.
Vocabulário de termos e expressões empregados no domínio do sistema Braille1951 UNESCO report on standardizing Spanish and Portuguese Braille
{{Braille
French-ordered braille alphabets
Portuguese language