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Dzongkha Braille

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Through Braille

Despite Dzongkha and Tibetan using nearly the same alphabet in print, the braille alphabets differ radically, with Tibetan Braille closer to German conventions and assigned letter values according to different sound correspondences.

Alphabet

The reversed letters used in Sanskrit loanwords are indicated with the diacritic ⠐:

ཊ ⠐⠞, ཋ ⠐⠹, ཌ ⠐⠮, ཎ ⠐⠝, ཥ ⠐⠩.

The vowel "a" is inherent in a consonant letter, and is not written explicitly. Other vowels are written after a consonant as in English Braille. When a vowel occurs at the beginning of a word, the vowel letter is carried by a null consonant ཨ ⟨⠁⟩:

Sanskrit vowel-marking includes:

⠁⠸⠪ ཨཿ aḥ, ⠁⠰⠳ ཨྃ aṃ,

as in ཀིཿ ⠅⠊⠸⠪ kiḥ, ཀོྃ ⠅⠕⠰⠳ koṃ.

It's not clear how conjuncts are indicated. However, the conjunct ཀྵ ⠅⠘⠐⠩ kṣa in Sanskrit loans suggests that the 45 points ⠘ conjoin two consonants.

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