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Bleaching → Semantic Bleaching
Bornu Arabic → Subsaharan Arabic
Braille
1 . I n t r o d u c t i o n o f B r a i l l e i n
t h e A r a b w o r l d
Physically, Braille is a “universally accepted sys-
tem of writing used by and for blind persons and
consisting of a code of 63 characters, each made
up of one to six raised dots arranged in a six-
position matrix or cell” (Encyclopedia Britan-
nica II, 465). Content-wise, Arabic is a six-dot
tactile copy of its schwarzschrift (normal ink
print). The system is divided into the alphabet
and its subsystems, the non-alphabetical code
systems of contractions, and the mathematical
signs and musical notation. One interesting
fact is that Braille is a functionally limited system
of writing. From its introduction to the Arab
world in Egypt in the second half of the 19th
century, the system was, and still is, functionally
limited to the field of education. Very little non-
educational material is printed in Braille in any
given year.
The history of the introduction of Braille to
the Arab world is vague, perhaps because it was
a non-governmental initiative with little docu-
mentation (al-Sharkawi 1997:31–32). It was
first introduced in the educational system of
the visually impaired in Egypt by Mu™ammad
±Anas, an Arabic teacher and private school
owner in Cairo. ±Anas traveled to France where
he learned Braille in the same institute where
Louis Braille studied and worked (Makhluf
1995). After returning to Egypt, ±Anas estab-
lished a school for the blind in his native popu-
lar quarter of ”ayxùn in Cairo, where Braille
was used for the first time as a medium for edu-
cation. ±Anas adapted the French Braille system
to the Arabic language. Named after its creator,
the script he devised came to be known as al-xa††
al-±anasì. For printing Braille, ±Anas used the
same tools as in Europe, the slate and the stylus.
No traces of that adaptation survived because
the project came to an end when the school was
closed after the death of its owner (al-Sharkawi
1997:34).
Subsequent projects to introduce Braille in
Egypt until the first half of the 20th century were
sporadic. At the end of the 19th century, a
British school run by a Dr. Scott was established
and Braille was reinstated as the medium of edu-
cation. Little is known about the nature of
Braille at that time: owing to the rising national-
ist spirit of the period, the school was closed
at the beginning of the 20th century and Braille
faded away (al-Sharkawi 1997:35–36). In 1935,
Braille was restored to schools once more, but
remained confined to the elementary schools
until it was extended to preparatory schools in
1957 and to secondary schools in 1960 (al-
Sharkawi 1997:36). The importance of this
expansion of Braille through secondary educa-
316 braille
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2. tion is that it necessitated devising arithme-
tical and musical codes, thus enlarging the
system. From 1935 onwards, the type of Braille
used was the same as the type described in
(2) below.
Braille cells are upright rectangular shapes
made of two vertical columns. Each is made of
three dot positions, which are numerically
identified as dots from 1 to 6. Dots 1–3 form the
right column, and the dots 4–6 form the left col-
umn from the pressed side of the page. Dots are
separated from one another by thin vertical and
horizontal empty stripes made possible by the
metal wall separating the dot cells. Letters and
symbols are formed by embossing dots from
side A (the upper side) to side B (the lower
pressed side) by means of a stylus (a sharp-ended
hand tool), which presses against six dot posi-
tions on side B. A normal Braille line is made of
30 dot cells.
Through the combination of dot positions
and their distribution on the two vertical
columns, the symbol takes a distinctive tactile
shape. Empty dot positions help the reader iden-
tify the embossed positions forming the letters.
Between dot cells there is a barrier. The direction
of embossing symbols is right to left, and read-
ing goes from left to right, even in Arabic and in
top-to-bottom scripts. Groups of symbols that
belong to one another are in adjacent dot cells.
Between groups of symbols there is a separating
empty dot cell. The up and down horizontal
contours of cells form the physical borders of
lines (al-Sharkawi 1997:10–17).
2 . T h e A r a b i c B r a i l l e a l p h a b e t
s y s t e m
The alphabet system in Arabic Braille, albeit for
no physical necessity, is divided into three sub-
systems: the alphabet letters, the short vowels (in
addition to case endings, feminine marker, and
±alif maqßùra), and the hamzas. Although all
these subsystems can theoretically be repre-
sented along the same horizontal line, as in
Arabic schwarzschrift, the two latter sub-sys-
tems are not perceived as letters of the alphabet.
The Arabic Braille alphabet is made of 29 let-
ter symbols, although the letters of the schwarz-
schrift alphabet are only 28. In Braille there is
the additional symbol for làm-±alif. Table 1 gives
the dot representations of the alphabet.
Table 1. The Arabic Braille alphabet
Letter Name Letter Dot
Number Representation
±alif 1 1
bà± 2 1–2
tà± 3 2–3–4–5
µà± 4 1–2–3–4
jìm 5 2–4–5
™à± 6 1–5–6
xà± 7 1–3–4–6
dàl 8 1–4–5
≈àl 9 2–3–4–6
rà± 10 1–2–3–5
zày 11 1–3–5–6
sìn 12 2–3–4
“ìn 13 1–4–6
ßàd 14 1–2–3–4–6
∂àd 15 1–2–4–6
†à± 16 2–3–4–5–6
Úà± 17 1–2–3–4–5–6
≠ayn 18 1–2–3–5–6
ÿayn 19 1–2–6
fà± 20 1–2–4
qàf 21 1–2–3–4–5
kàf 22 1–3
làm 23 1–2–3
mìm 24 1–3–4
nùn 25 1–3–4–5
hà± 26 1–2–4
wàw 27 2–4–5–6
làm ±alif 28 1–2–3–6
yà± 29 2–4
The right column is the dominant one from the
embossing side, which is the left tactile side. The
table also shows that only one letter is repre-
sented by one dot position, ±alif; and one letter is
represented by the full six dot positions, Úà±.
Only two letters, bà± and yà±, are represented by
two dot positions, while the majority of the let-
ters use three, four, or five dot positions. Eleven
letters are represented by three dot positions, ten
by four, and four by five.
The Arabic Braille letters that stand for the
same, similar, or even broadly similar sounds in
other languages have the same dot representa-
tions. Number 2 in Table 1 above, for instance,
stands for the letter bà± which represents the
voiced plosive bilabial /b/. The letter b in the lan-
guages that use the Latin script, which repre-
sents similar sound qualities, has the same dot
distribution in Braille.
braille 317
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3. As in the schwarzschrift of Arabic, short vow-
els are not part of the Braille alphabet. They are
the same dot representations given to the case
endings, and are therefore categorized with
them as elements of ta“kìl. In normal individual
writings and printing of books, words are writ-
ten without short vowels, although there is no
physical hindrance to align short vowels along
the same horizontal line with consonants. In
some cases, however, short vowels are repre-
sented inside the word extending its horizontal
length (al-Sharkawi 1997:206–210). Short vow-
els are represented in Table 2.
Table 2. Short vowels
Symbol Name Dot Representation
fat™a 2
kasra 1–5
∂amma 1–3–6
As in the case of the consonants, short vowel dot
representations are right-column dominant. The
same dot distributions are used to stand for case
endings at the end of words. Categorized in the
same subcategory are three other scriptural
devices: “adda ‘doubling’; ±alif maqßùra; and tà±
marbù†a (the feminine ending) (al-Sharkawi
1997:94–95). Dot representations for these are
given in Table 3.
Hamza (the glottal stop) is represented by
five symbols in Arabic Braille. Four of the five
values.
Table 3. Non-Short vowel symbols
Symbol Name Dot Representation
±alif maqßùra 1–3–5
“adda 6
tà± marbù†a 1–6
represented by these symbols are complex sound
values (hamza plus a short or long vowel).
Although the hamza and each vowel have sepa-
rate dot representations, a sound combination
cannot be expressed using two symbols. A
hamza followed by a short /a/ vowel, for exam-
ple, is a sound combination expressed by a sym-
bol that is different from both the symbols
allocated to the short vowel and the one allo-
cated to the hamza. Table 4 gives the Braille dot
representations of the hamzas:
Table 4. Hamzas
Symbol Name Dot Representation
hamza 3
hamza ≠alà ±alif 3–4
hamza ≠alà madd 1–2–6
hamza ≠alà yà± 1–3–4–5–6
hamza ≠alà wàw 1–2–5–6
Punctuation marks in Arabic Braille are seven in
number and are put immediately after the last
letter of the word before the blank space which
separates words. Physically, punctuation marks
in the Braille system are different from the alpha-
bet in that they do not use the dots 1 and 4, leav-
ing the upper part of the dot cell empty. Another
difference is that some punctuation marks are
represented by two dot cells, while the alpha-
bet letters are represented only by one dot cell.
Table 5 presents the punctuation marks.
Table 5. Punctuation marks
Symbol Name Dot Representation
Comma 5
Full stop 2–5–6
Colon 5–2
Semi-colon 2–3–6
Dash 2–5–2–5
Brackets 2–3–5–6 2–3–5–6
Parentheses 2–3–6 3–5–6
The two cases of the short vowels and the
hamzas point to the fact that the Braille alphabet
system was devised with the purpose of providing
a tactile equivalent symbol for each schwarz-
schrift one. Although Braille does not face the
physical problems encountered by schwarzschrift
because it does not need to mount short vowels on
hamzas, there was no intention to solve in Braille
the problems of vowels and symbol complexity in
the schwarzschrift. Braille has also inherited the
schwarzschrift problem of the long vowel repre-
sentation: symbols 27 and 29 represent not only
the long vowels /ù/ and /ì/ respectively, but the
diphthongs /w/ and /y/ as well.
Braille also has its own physical problems,
mirror opposition and short vowel blocking
being the two most salient. Mirror opposition is
when a certain dot representation is exactly the
opposite shape of another dot representation.
Eight pairs of letters have this problem: 5-26,
10-27, 6-12, 8-20, 9-11, 13-24, 15-25, 16-18 in
318 braille
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4. Table 1 are mirror oppositions. Two other letter
representations are mirror oppositions of non-
alphabet symbols: 29 is a mirror opposite of the
kasra symbol, and 14 of Table 1 is also a mirror
opposite to the hamza ≠alà yà±. It is a confusing
phenomenon, because fast reading depends
on readily realizing shapes (al-Sharkawi 1997:
142–147). Vowel blocking happens when con-
tractions are used. Although uncommon, theo-
retically one can use short vowels in Arabic
Braille. If contractions are used for clusters of
letters, no short vowel representation is allowed
inside the word, nor is a case ending. If short
vowels or case endings must be represented, no
contraction can take place, and the size of the
fully represented words becomes much longer
(al-Sharkawi 2002:205–212).
3 . C o n t r a c t i o n s
In Braille, a word can take up a large horizontal
space on the line. Therefore a system of contrac-
tion symbols was devised in order to reduce
the number of dot cells needed for a word.
Contractions are one or two dot cells used to
stand for full words, morphemes in words, or
even consonant clusters (al-Sharkawi 1997:
124). They are divided into two categories: the
first contains simple contractions, which are one
dot cell units. The second contains complex con-
tractions, which are two dot cells for one word.
Letters forming one word can be a part of
another word. In such a case, however, contrac-
tion takes place with certain limitations. If the
word or cluster of letters has three or four let-
ters, and if it is attached to a function word, a
separation mark (dots 3–6) has to be added
before the contracted cluster when the contrac-
tion symbol is an alphabet letter. Yet, when
the contraction symbol is a non-alphabet letter,
there is no limitation. If the contraction symbol
is a symbol of punctuation marks or case ending,
it cannot be used to contract a letter cluster at
the end of a word. If a cluster of letters happens
to be composed of the same letters as a func-
tional morpheme, it cannot be contracted in the
middle of the word. Therefore, functional mor-
pheme contractions are limited to the end of the
word. Finally, if the contraction symbol is in
mirror opposition to the preceding letter in the
word, contraction is blocked. Contraction con-
ditions are devised to avoid confusion between
contraction symbols and single value symbols.
The number of simple contraction symbols is
55. The majority are alphabet dot representa-
tions that contract full function words (preposi-
tions, conjunctions, pronouns, demonstratives)
and grammatical morphemes in words (definite
article, plural and dual morphemes). In most of
the simple contractions, the first letter of the
word is used as a contraction symbol. When
grammatical morphemes are contracted, non-
letter symbols are used, and the contracted ele-
ment remains in its position in the word. Table 6
contains some examples of simple contractions.
Table 6. Examples of simple contractions
Contraction Contracted Meaning
word
1–2 (bà±) ball ‘but’ [conjunction]
2–3–4–5 (tà±) tilka ‘that’ [fem.
demonstrative]
1–2–3–5–6 (≠ayn) ≠indamà ‘when’
[conjunction]
1–5–6 (™à±) ™attà ‘until’ [particle]
Complex contractions are full words contracted
in two dot cells: the first part is a non-alphabet
symbol, while the second part is a letter in the
contracted word. The first part only uses the left
vertical column, dots 4–6.The total number of
complex contractions is 124.
4 . C o d e s y s t e m s
Arabic Braille has mathematical and musical
codes. Code systems differ from the alphabet
structurally in that there are areas in the dot cell
they do not use, while the alphabet uses the two
vertical columns and the three horizontal lines of
the cell. Numerals, not arithmetic signs, use the
upper two lines of the dot cell, leaving the bot-
tom dots 3–6 empty, while the musical code uses
the bottom two lines, leaving the upper line 1–4
dots empty. In addition, numerals are distin-
guished by a number marker put before the
number to distinguish it from alphabet letters.
Like the alphabet, numerals are written from
left to right, and read from right to left. But they
use the upper and middle horizontal lines, and
not the bottom one. Numerals are clustered
beside one another without a space in between.
Before the number cluster, there is a number
marker. After the cluster ends, there is an empty
dot cell. Arithmetic symbols, unlike numerals,
braille 319
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5. use the bottom two lines in the dot cell. Table 7
gives the dot representations of the numerals:
Table 7. Numerals
Number Dot Representation
0 20405
1 1
2 1–2
3 1–4
4 1–4–5
5 1–5
6 1–2–4
7 1–2–4–5
8 1–2–5
9 2–4
Number symbol 3–4–5–6
The numbers 0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are dot rep-
resentations of alphabet letters and short vow-
els. The numbers 3 and 7, however, are dot
representations for contraction symbols. Like
the alphabet, numeral dot representations must
contain dots in the right vertical column. Table 8
gives the arithmetic symbols in Braille.
Arithmetic symbols are added between num-
bers without a separating space. After a symbol
a number symbol is not necessary.
The musical code of the Arabic Braille system
uses the same dot distributions as the numerals,
but one line down horizontally. If the number 1 is
represented by dot 1, the first note is represented
by dot 2. By the same token, if the number four is
represented by dots 1-2-4, note d is represented
by the dots 2-5-6. Bars are represented by dot rep-
resentations clustered beside one another, and an
empty space stands between bars.
Table 8: Arithmetic Symbols
Arithmetic Symbol Dot Representation
+ 2–6
- 3–5
* 2–5–6
÷ 2–3–5
= 2–5 2–5
B i b l i o g r a p h i c a l r e f e r e n c e s
Sharkawi, Muhammad al-. 1997. The Arabic Braille:
Evaluation and suggestions for modification. M.A.
thesis, American University in Cairo.
——. 2002. “±Aßwà† al-lìn fì †arìqat bràyl al-
≠Arabiyya”. al-≠Arabiyya: ±Ab™àµ luÿawiyya wa-
jtimà≠iyya wa-tarbawiyya, ed. Alaa Elgibali and
El-Said Badawi, 207–212. Cairo: Arabic Language
Institute, American University in Cairo.
Maxlùf, ≠Abd al-£akam. 1995. Tarbiyat al-mu≠aw-
waqìn baßariyyan. Cairo: al-Nur Institute for the
Blind.
Muhammad al-Sharkawi
(American University in Cairo)
Buka®a-syndrome
The consonant r (or velarized ®) is realized in
many dialects with a degree of delay. When r
directly follows the consonant in a sequence Crv,
such delay may result in the realization of an
intrusive vowel preceding r or ®. This phenome-
non was termed the ‘buka®a-syndrome’ by
Woidich (1978). In allegro speech, however, the
syndrome usually remains absent.
Such buka®a-vowels are often heard in northern
and southern Middle Egyptian dialects, including
the Fayyùm oasis (see Behnstedt and Woidich
1985:maps 47–49) and in most parts of the oases
of the Western Desert of Egypt (see Woidich 1978;
Behnstedt and Woidich 1982:50, 1985, map 47).
The phenomenon was also observed in several of
the Bedouin dialects of Sinai (see, e.g., de Jong
2000:112–118, 266–267, 352, 431–432).
In what is termed the ‘simple buka®a-syn-
drome’ the phonetic quality of the inserted
vowel is guided by the vowel following r or ®.
The rule for the simple buka®a-syndrome may be
summarized as follows:
Ø > v / - C__r v
[a] [a]
C = any consonant
r = r or ®
[a] = a fixed set of phonetic features
The process entails the following: when a vowel
– be it a base vowel or an anaptyctic (see below)
– is to be realized following r, voicing of this r is
already being produced before the tongue has
been fully brought into position for the actual
realization of r. Since the realization of the
vowel following r is already being anticipated,
the phonetic quality of the voicing will be guided
by this vowel following r.
Some examples are (buka®a-vowels under-
lined): (from northern Middle Egyptian) (the
syndrome’s namesake) buk®a > bukå®a ‘tomor-
row’, ™amra > ™ama®a ‘red [fem. sg.]’, (from
320 bukar
.a-syndrome
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