Irish Braille is the braille alphabet of the Irish language. It is augmented by specifically Irish letters for vowels that take acute accents in print:
⠿ é and ⠾ ú are only coincidentally the French Braille letters for é and ú: They are simply the braille letters of the third decade after z, assigned to print in alphabetical order.
Irish Braille also uses some of the Grade-1½ shortcuts of English Braille,
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ch gh sh th ed er st ing ar* ea con dis com en in
⠜ only has the value ar in prose. In poetry, it is used to mark a new line, like "/" in print.
These shortcuts are not used across elements of compound words. For example, in uiscerian (uisce-rian) "aqueduct", e-r is spelled out, as is s-t in trastomhas (tras-tomhas) "diameter". There are no special braille letters for dotted consonants. The letter h is used instead, as in modern print. A shortcut may be used even when the final consonant is lenited with h; comh, for example, is written ⠤⠓ com-h.
The only word-sign is the letter ⠎ s for agus "and".
The letters j k q v w x y z were not originally part of the Irish alphabet, but apart from w they have been introduced through English loans, so they occur in Irish Braille. Punctuation is the same as in English Braille.
References
- Standard Irish (Gaeilge) Braille 2010, National Council for the Blind of Ireland
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