Lesson 7 braille system summary
Answers
The Braille system is a way of writing things. It is named after Louis Braille, the French man who invented it. The system is used by blind people to read and write. The Braille system uses a set of raised bumps or dots that can be felt with a finger. Each set of dots is a character in an alphabet, and the numbers and some punctuation.
The Braille system is a way of writing things. It is named after Louis Braille, the French man who invented it. The system is used by blind people to read and write. The Braille system uses a set of raised bumps or dots that can be felt with a finger. Each set of dots is a character in an alphabet, and the numbers and some punctuation.
It is possible to transcribe braille by replacing each letter with the braille code for the letter. This is usually known as Grade 1 Braille. Grade 1 braille is mostly used by beginners.
The basic problem of Grade 1 braille is that braille letters are much larger than printed ones. The standard page is 11"x11" (28 cm by 28 cm) in size and only has room for twenty-five lines of forty characters. This means a book would need to be very thick compared to a standard printed book.
For this reason almost all English braille books use a transcription known as Grade 2 braille. Grade 2 braille uses contractions, which allows to save space and increase reading speed. Grade 2 braille was developed by linguists (people who study languages), who also looked at customs, styles and practices. Transcribing a text into Grade 2 braille is difficult, and the people doing the transcription need to have a special education.
In English, there are 23 words which are replaced with a single letter. That way, the word but is contracted (shortened) to the single letter b, can to c, do to d, and so on. Even this simple rule has exceptions and special cases, which must be thought of. As an example, only the verb to do is replaced by d, the noun do (which stands for a note in music) is a different word, and is written in full.
Sometimes, part of words are contracted, and a character can mean different things in different parts of a word. There are many rules for this process. For example, the character with dots 2-3-5 (the letter "f" lowered in the braille cell) stands for "ff" when used in the middle of a word. At the beginning of a word, this same character stands for the word "to" although the character is written in braille with no space following it. At the end of a word, the same character represents an exclamation point.
The contraction rules cannot be used when it would make a problem with a prefix or suffix on the word. Also, some rules are flexible and may depend on the situation. So when the rules permit the same word to be written in more than one way, preference is given to "the contraction that is closer to the correct pronunciation."