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SYMBOLS Onsets Rimes Tones Symbols RULES
Ex) Simplified Chinese 时间不早了！ Traditional Chinese 時間不早了！ Pinyin Shíjiān bù zǎo le! literally time not early (perfective Particle )! Braille ⠱⠂⠛⠩ ⠃⠥ ⠵⠖ ⠇⠢⠰⠂ Transcription Shˊjian bu zao le! AMBIGUITY AND FUTURE OF CHINESE BRAILLE The onset pairs ''g/j'', ''k/q'', ''h/x'' each has the same dot pattern. This, however, leads to no ambiguity, because the onsets ''j, q, x'' are only followed by rimes which begin with ''i'' or ''ü'' while the onsets ''g, k, h'' are never followed by such rimes. Note that the syllable spelled in pinyin as ''ju'' is actually a combination of ''j'' and ''ü'', and is represented as such (⠛⠬ for ''ju''; ⠛⠥ for ''gu''). Similarly, most rime pairs that have the same dot patterns do not cause ambiguity. There are only three pairs of syllables (''mo/me, e/o, le/lo'') which are ambiguous. None of them seems to cause real confusion. Whilst the Braille assignment does not cause much ambiguity, the rule of tone omission do. In practice, most tones are omitted, which leads to a lot of confusion. Nevertheless, this practice is barely reproachable because the representation of tone by an extra Braille cell is quite uneconomical. Systematic indication of tones in the current system could lengthen the text by 50%. A more delicate system known as Two-Cell Chinese Braille () was designed in the 1970s. It encodes all the information (onset, rime and tone) of one syllable in two Braille cells, thus is at the same time unambiguous and economical. This new system is now used in parallel with the current system. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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