[nabs-l] learning arabic or chinese

Mon Aug 3 14:03:51 UTC 2009

Hi Eliza and all,

I've given this a lot of thought, so I hope you can bear with me as I  
share my thought process with you.

Learning languages for anyone consists of reading, writing and  
speaking. for blind people, speaking can be learned (I tghink) the  
same way as sighted folks would. However, things get a bit dicey with  
reading and writing. Here's my thoughts on that.

First, a Braille code must be learned for the language. If it's a  
romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) this will be simple,  
only requireing an accent table in addition to the standard Braille  
letters. For non-romance languages the trouble is that there are few  
people to teach new Braille codes to students, and few online  
resources. This makes learning in a sighted classroom setting  
challenging. The following two links might help. The first talks about  
Chinese Braille and the second speaks more generally about teaching  
Braille-reading students new languages. It's a page on transcribing  
Braille into foreign languages, but there are other links on the page  
worth checking out.

Chinese Braille:
http://www.braille.ch/pschin-e.htm

Transcribing Braille into foreign languages:
http://www.miusa.org/ncde/tipsheets/foreignlanguageandblind/infoguide/transcribingbraille

I, like Eliza, would love to be able to learn a Braille system as well  
as use screenreaders to access foreign languages. The next challenge  
is to access material professors might give you in the language you  
are trying to learn. You might know the Braille code for your Arabic  
book, but if a transcriber doesn't, how will you get the book in  
Braille? For online materials, will JAWS really read them in the  
correct languages, or do you have to get some other software for them  
to be recognized? Or is it necessary for everything to be written  
phonetically? These questions must all be answered before proceeding.

The last issue is translating Braille languages into print. For  
romance languages this is relatively simple, but not so much for  
Arabic or Chinese and other pictographic writing. I wish that a  
Nemetex-like piece of software, which fairly seamlessly translates  
Nemeth code into print math, existed for languages too, but I have yet  
to find anything like that.

So those are my long-winded thoughts on learning languages; I hope you  
find those links helpful.

Sarah

Quoting Eliza Cooper <eliza.l.cooper at gmail.com>:

> Hi all,
> 	Thanks to everyone for their help and advice.  Being a visual learner,
> having the option to use braille in my learning process might make it
> easier for me, but it's good to know that Jaws can handle these.
> 	Happy Monday,
> 	Eliza
>
> On Aug 2, 2009, at 2:55 PM, Sydney Walker Freedman wrote:
>
>> ...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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