> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 16:14:48 -0000, Marco Cimarosti
> <marco.cimarosti@...> wrote:
> >
> > The only braille system I know of that completely violates the
> > original French convention is Japanese. Japanese braille only has
> > kana (making no distinction between Katakana and Hiragana). Kana
> > letters are encoded using three dots for the leading consonant and
> > three dot for the trailing consonant.
>
> Eh? Japanese syllables don't have trailing consonants, except for -n.

A typo for "trailing vowel".

> From the descriptions I've seen, in general, the three dots at the top
> left represent the vowel, while the three at the bottom right
> represent the consonant, so one braille cell can represent a CV
> syllable of the kind that's typical for Japanese. Variations (such as
> CyV and CVC:V, as well as voiced stops) are handled by additional
> cells.

Right.

> > So, curiously, braille kana is actually an abjad, not a syllabary.
>
> I'd say it's basically a syllabary.

Ooops! Another typo: chenage "abjad" into "abugida".

> > In Arabic and Hebrew, the notation of short vowels is optional and
> > used only in grammatical, religious or poetic texts, exactly as in
> > the corresponding scripts for sighted people.
>
> Sounds a little bit like capitalisation in German :) Generally, German
> braille is written entirely in lower-case (unlike, say, American
> braille, though I believe British braille usage also uses optional
> capitalisation), but capitalisation can be indicated when necessary,
> e.g. when teaching print spelling or for acronyms and other
> abbreviations.

I guess that in most brailles capitalization is only indicated when it is
not obvious from the context, and in German capitalization is practically
always obvious from context.

--
Marco