IPA Braille

IPA Braille is the modern standard Braille encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as recognized by the International Council on English Braille. Competing systems are recognized by the BAUK and BANA, but these are inadequate for modern (or even consistent) use. A braille version of the IPA was first created by Merrick and Potthoff in 1934, and published in London. It was used in France, Germany, and anglophone countries. However, it was not updated as the IPA evolved, and by 1989 had become obsolete. In 1990 it was officially reissued by BAUK, but in a corrupted form that made it largely unworkable. In 1997 BANA created a completely new system for the United States and Canada. However, it was incompatible with braille IPA elsewhere in the world and in addition proved to be cumbersome and often inadequate. In 2008 Robert Englebretson published a revised version of the Merrick and Potthoff notation. It is largely true to the original in consonants and vowels, though the diacritics were completely reworked, as necessitated by the major revisions in print IPA diacritics since 1934. The diacritics were also made more systematic, and follow rather than precede the base letters. IPA Braille does not use the conventions of English Braille. It is set off by slash or square brackets, which indicate that the intervening material is IPA rather than national orthography. Thus brackets are required in braille even when not used in print.

Basic letters
The letters of the basic Latin alphabet are the same: a b c d e f g h i j k l mn o p q r s t u v wx y z In addition, there are the following dedicated letters: Following a pattern found in many national alphabets, a few braille letters are reversed to represent a similar letter: thus reversed nsz produces . The choice for may reflect the shape of that letter in print. Many of the vowels use the same letters used for modified vowels in national alphabets, such as French Braille. A few other letters occur, such as , but only as part of digraphs.

Modified letters
Other IPA letters are indicated with digraphs or even trigraphs usin 5th-decade letters (letters from the punctuation row). The component letter ".", for example, is equivalent to the tail of the retroflex consonants. This presumably derives from the old IPA practice of using a subscript dot for retroflex consonants. It also marks vowels which in print are formed by rotating the letter.[1] [2] Similarly, is used to derive small capital variants, as well as (from ).[3]

 "?" is used for hook tops, curly tails, and other loops; turned letters with tails; closed (from ), and . is used for fricatives written with Greek letters, using the conventions of scientific notation in English. The basic letters and , which do not occur on their own, are found here. is also used with letters of the fifth decade for transcriber-defined symbols, which need to be specified for each text, as they have no set meaning. These are , , , , , , , , , . is used for barred vowels. is used for other hooks, as in flaps, as well as a couple barred and turned letters. is used for click letters. These are far more legible in braille than in print, and there is no distinction from the old click letters. Ejectives are written with an apostrophe, , as in print IPA, so t is . (This is marked as a superscript. See below.) Ligatures, regardless of whether these are written with a tie bar or as actual ligatures in print, are indicated by dot 5, so t and are both . This includes the historic ligatures and .

Diacritics
IPA Braille diacritics are written in two cells. The first indicates the position: whether superscript, mid-line, or subscript. , for example, is the tilde. is therefore nasal , is creaky-voiced a, and is pharyngealized s. As noted above, dot 5 is used for the tie bar; the only diacritics which use it are the rhotic and ejective (apostrophe) diacritics seen above, and the velar/pharyngeal tilde just illustrated. In other cases, such as the ring for voiceless , a diacritic may superscript or subscript with no change in meaning. The distinction is therefore not necessary in braille, but can be maintained if the text is to be transliterated into print. The wedge, which indicates voicing when below a letter, can be placed above to represent Americanist notation such as and . The placement dot distinguishes the tilde from the letter

, and the ring from the etter .[4] Many diacritics are identical in form to the corresponding symbols in Unified English Braille, but always follow the letter in IPA Braille. When there is more than one diacritic, they are written in the order lowest to highest. Superscript letters are simply the superscript placement dot plus the base letter. So: , , , , , , , etc. The others are as follows; any of these may be modified by a change in placement: , , , , , , , , , , (?) The high and low falling tone diacritics are extrapolated from the rising tone diacritics.

Non-combining modifiers
marks tone letters, stress, and prosody. | (?)

The high and low falling tone letters are extrapolated from the rising tone letters; the dipping tone may be expected from the patterns elsewhere. represents peaking (risingfalling) tones in general, and so has no exact print equivalent. It is not clear how other combination tone letters, such as the Mandarin dipping tone , ou d e formed, hether the needs to be repeated for each pitch, or if perhaps the ligature mark can be used instead; that is, whether would be or .

Punctuation and code switching

The only punctuation which is defined is the period (syllable break, full stop), comma (pause), hyphen (morpheme break), and rightward arrow (phonological realization). . , - For all other punctuation, you must opt out of IPA coding. The primary indication of IPA coding are the brackets, square or slash depending on whether the transcription is phonetic or phonemic. These are marked by : / [ ]

 opts out of IPA. A single instance indicates that the following cell is to be read in the national orthography. Doubled, , it indicates that the following string is to be read in orthography, up to the opt-in indicator , which marks the end of the non-IPA passage. These are only used for non-IPA (or nonstandard IPA) strings within IPA brackets. Examples would be the use of parentheses to mark an optional consonant or vowel, since parentheses are not defined for IPA Braille.

Notes
1. ^ For this purpose, is treated as a rotated (script?) o, and as a rotated u rather than m, perhaps facilitated by braille u and m themselves being a rotated pair 2. ^ Schwa has a dedicated letter 3. ^ For this purpose, is treated as a small capital J 4. ^ It is therefore not possible to transcribe superscript or at this time.

References
Englebretson, 2008, IPA Braille: An Updated Tactile Representation of the International Phonetic Alphabet, CNIB Englebretson, 2009, "An overview of IPA Braille: An updated tactile representation of the International Phonetic Alphabet", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39/1