Amharic Braille

Amharic Braille
Type	alphabet
Languages	Amharic
Parent systems	Braille English Braille Amharic Braille

Amharic Braille is the braille alphabet of the Amharic language. Letter values are mostly in line with international usage.

Chart

Amharic Braille is a consonant–vowel alphabet, not an abugida like the Amharic script. However, because the alphabetic chart is organized by syllable rather than by letter, the vowels will be given first, then the consonants in Ge'ez order.

Amharic Braille is unusual in that the blank cell ⟨⠀⟩ is used for the vowel ⟨ə⟩. (The script presumably has some other word divider, analogous to print ⟨፡⟩, but this is not available in current sources.) This is not the default vowel in the Amharic script, which is ⟨ä⟩ (braille ⠢). Most consonants may also be followed by ⠭; this may be a -w-.

ä	u	i	a	e	ə	o
h ሀ	l ለ	ḥ ሐ	m መ	ś ሠ	r ረ	s ሰ
š ሸ	ḳ ቀ	b በ	t ተ	č ቸ	ḫ ኀ	n ነ
ñ ኘ	ʾ አ	k ከ	x ኸ	w ወ	ʿ ዐ	z ዘ
ž ዠ	y የ	d ደ	ǧ ጀ	g ገ	ṭ ጠ	č̣ ጨ
p̣ ጰ	ṣ ጸ	ṣ́ ፀ	f ፈ	p ፐ	v ቨ	(?)

Note that in the chart in the infobox, which only covers a third of the syllabary, ś ሠ is assigned the value of standard braille s; s ሰ is omitted.

It may be that Cwa is written with ⠭. It is not clear how Cya is written.

References

• Ethiopic Braille at Adaptive Technology Center for the Blind, Addis Ababa