Two-Cell Chinese Braille

Two-Cell Chinese Braille was designed in the 1970s and is used in parallel with traditional Chinese Braille in China.

Each syllable is rendered with two braille characters. The first combines the initial and medial; the second the rime and tone. The base letters represent the initial and rime; these are modified with diacritics for the medial and tone. Thus each of the braille cells has aspects of an abugida.

The first cell indicates the initial, generally in dots 1 to 4, and the medial in dots 5 and 6. This design exploits restrictions on co-occurrence of initials and medials to fit all the allowable combinations in a single cell.

The medial -i- is represented by dot 5 (⠐), the medial -u- by dot 6 (⠠), and the medial -ü- by both dots 5 and 6 (⠰). The z c s series is derived from zh ch sh as if they contained a -i- medial; these two series are not distinguished in many Mandarin dialects.

A null/zero initial (a vowel-initial syllable) is indicated with the null consonant ⠾.

At least one letter in each place of articulation comes from international use (⠖ f, ⠞ ti, ⠇ l, ⠅ k, ⠓ xi, ⠉ zh), with at least some of the others derived from these (cf. ⠅⠃⠁ k h g and ⠍⠋⠉ ch sh zh).