[nabs-l] learning arabic or chinese

[Sydney Walker Freedman]

...and I thought *Chinese* braille was crazy. I'd say that, in
general, languages with alphabets, e.g. Arabic, Russian, Greek,
English, are easier to handle in braille than those with pictographic
systems, e.g. Chinese. In a pinch, if you find that the braille may
keep you from learning quickly or simply be too much of a bother, you
could just use roman transliteration (for Mandarin Chinese, called
Pinyin, for example).

Pax,
Sydney

On 8/2/09, Franandah Damstra <fantasyfanatic01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> Well, I've been learning Japanese since I was twelve and they use
> braille as well. Sadly, it is quiete a  long process. They first
> translate the kanji (The picture writing taken from the Chinese) and
> turn it into Kana (A  mix of Hiragana, which is used for non kanji
> words and for young children, and Katagana, which is used for foreign
> words with Japanese pronunciation.) After that it is translated into
> Braille. The Braille however, is quite complicated and I have yet to
> master it. I am much better at understanding, and then speaking the
> language. In this case, I'm grateful for a  screen reader.
>
>
> On 8/1/09, Eliza Cooper <eliza.l.cooper at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Ben and all,
>> 	Very good point, and please understand that I meant absolutely no
>> offense by my choice of the term "non-standard."  I simply used it as
>> a way to differentiate between the American english alphabet (i.e.,
>> the Latin one, as you pointed out) and those of other languages.  Poor
>> wording, admittedly.
>> 	Thanks,
>> 	Eliza
>>
>>
>> On Aug 1, 2009, at 1:43 AM, Ben J. Bloomgren wrote:
>>
>>> Hello Eliza,
>>>
>>> I am not a speaker of any language with an alphabet other than
>>> latin. Please
>>> be careful with the word nonstandard. It's only nonstandard to those
>>> of us
>>> whose languages use the Latin alphabet. To Nimer, the Arabic
>>> alphabet is
>>> standard and ours is nonstandard. Anyway, Jaws does have Realspeak
>>> solo
>>> direct voices for Russian, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean,
>>> Japanese and Greek as well as Czech and Polish, whose versions of
>>> the Latin
>>> alphabet has some other diacritical marks that must have special
>>> treatment.
>>>
>>> Ben
>>>
>>>
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