Subject:
Re: REPLY: Foriegn lang. credit for braille / FW: Braille (was
M
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>And the message by Jim Angerbrod on UNICODE list (that is
quoted hereafter) seems an aswer to the current topic on the
BRAILLE list: not only Braille is not a language per se, but it
is not even correct to say that it is a different way of
writing English. Braille is actually a different way of writing
any language - potentially any language.
It seems to me that the best way to think of Braille is as a
script that can be used as the basis for orthographies of many
different languages, just as Latin, Arabic or any other script
could be used as the basis for the orthographies of many
different languages. It just happens that there is a very
simple mapping between Latin-for-English and
Braille-for-English, but (apparently) the mapping between
Han-for-Chinese and Braille-for-Chinese is at all simple
(indeed, not algorithmic).
Here's a follow up question of interest: Scripts such as Latin,
Arabic, Han work well as the basis for orthographies of some
languages, but not necessarily for other languages. (E.g.
Arabic script was not that well suited for writing Turkish.)
Q: Is Braille better suited for writing some languages than for
others?
Metrics would be things such as
- ease of learning
- ease of remembering spellings or of recognising new words
- reading fluency
- writing fluency
But this question gets us a bit off topic.
Peter
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