Hi everyone! I hope you are good. I'm going to read some braille texts in contracted braille. English is not my native languae, so I don't know the contractions. Could you tell me how or where can I learn them? Thanks!

What kind of English braille do you want to know about? British English, American English, Canadian English and so on as they are all different. They wanted to create a contracted braille system that worked for all but I was one that voted against it and it did not go through but some contractions such as brackets they did get through the backdoor so I do not know them all now. I suggest you email the RNIB but doing it during Christmas is not a good time to pick.

It takes a long time to learn but I will give you a small part to get started.

one lettered abbreviations:

B = But
C = Can
D = do
E = every
F = from
G = Go
H = have
J = Just
K = knowledge
L = Like
M = More
N = Not
P = People
Q = Quite
R = Rather
S= So
T= That
U = us
V = Very
W = Will
X = it
Y = You
Z = As

This is just the start so as you can see this is never a quick job.

Thank you! books are american...

Ah, I use English braille so am not really sure of the differences. One example I do know is the capital letter, in American braille they use the capital (dot 6) we have it but don't officially use it in writing personally or in books. If I listened to an audio book no problem, some words are different such as apartment for flat but easier to understand. But a big issued to change a British book to American or change from American to British braille hence why they wanted a unified code for all English braille. Maybe you should contact the library of congress.

Hello, I know EUB grade 2 as well, but yes it takes time to learn they are a lot. you can resources on Hadley but it is a course and shipping and all that will take really long time.
good luck.

Thank you!

I also know them all, but I believe that all 187 of the real you EB contractions would take way too long to put into a message. Even if I did, that’s not a good way to practice. Your best option is to take some form of tutoring lessons. You could try Perkins or something like that.

Hi, just to complete Ynwa's list, x = it. Sorry brother - it just got to me, OCD or something!

With regard to English versus American Braille, I know very little about the contractions that have changed since UEB came in, but I do believe it is now being rolled out everywhere. I never had any problem reading American Braille books personally, although I would've been taught braille in Ireland. Aside from one or two books in which I have noticed a dot 3 in front of quotation marks that doesn't exist in most books, British and American Braille are, in my experience, by and large quite similar. I presume they have even more overlap since this UEB system came in. I didn't even know until Ynwa said it that the uncapitalised sentences was a British thing, in Ireland (just across the water) we do use the dot 6 for capital! I think every American book I've seen (mostly from the Library of Congress) has used the dot 6 as a capital letter.

So I had missed it out so I have now corrected it. I did google braille contractions and there was this website that gives out what the contraction was if you typed in a word but not so useful for us but perhaps if you look more you might find something useful.

The UEBOnline.org website has lessons you can take for free to learn the full Unified English Braille course. The certificates cost money but the lessons are free for anyone, blind or sighted. You need a qwerty keyboard and a modern web browser and that's it, which is fantastic.

Yes, it is really good! Thank you very much!

this reminds me of a way I used to try to memorize contracted spanish braille better. I would get a version of a document without contractions or grade 1, and another one, contracted, grade 2. Then I would just read things and whenever I got stumped, then go back to the grade one document and read that bit. This works very well, but this unfortunately assumes you have a braille display handy or a lot of time and paper lol.

Tha'ts a good idea! LOL. Do you still have those documents?