An Analysis of Thai Braille System

Abstract

Braille is the writing system used among people with visual impairment. It consists of a variety of cells of which each possess maximum of 6 dots to represent a certain character. There have been various research papers focusing on braille systems in many languages, especially English language, however very few researchers have conducted studies on Thai braille. This paper describes the Thai Braille system, which is believed to be influenced by the English and Japanese Braille systems. The results show that Japanese braille and Thai braille share five vowels similar in forms and sounds while English braille and Thai braille share fifteen consonants with similar sounds. These shared Braille forms are basic characters, which are then extended into other Braille characters representing vowels, consonants, and tones in Thai.  The extension is done by alternating dots within the cell or by adding a prefix or suffix braille cell. Braille characters are used to represent one character in Thai. But for a vowel sound that is written as a complex form using more than one character, only one Braille character is used to represent that sound. In terms of writing system, Braille characters follow most of the writing order in Thai. The exception is on a complex vowel form which is written as one Braille character after the consonant. Since the Thai Braille system is based on written forms of Thai, learners have to learn how to pronounce tones on the basis of three groups of Thai characters.