Sunday Serenity #368

Learn to Read Braille

This is an ongoing series from my Bucket List
of things I desperately want to do before
I loose the rest of my vision

My Bucket List
#10 Learn Braille

Double Side Braille Text

This bucket list item has two things in common with last week's #9.  It's learning a new language and it's something within my grasp if I reach for it.

OK so technically it's not a language but a transcription of a language. It's a new alphabet for reading English by touch instead of sight.  I find this concept more daunting than the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.  In fact, I think it would be easier to learn to read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Russian and Arabic by sight than to learn to read anything by touch.

But learning to read Grade 1 Braille (a one to one correspondence between characters) by sight would probably be a breeze and give me the foundation for proceeding on to reading by touch.  Grades 2 and 3 tho are another matter as they involve contractions, abbreviations, personalized shorthand with a letter's braille symbol standing in for common words.

As for writing braille--that's another story altogether.  Especially if you mean by using a stylus on paper for that involves punching the dots from the back side in a mirror image of the page--writing the characters backwards and the lines right to left!  As if that isn't enough, mistakes are not forgiven.  You cannot fix and reuse a letter cell once any of the six dots are punched.

My Bucket List

#1 Hot Air Balloon Ride
#2 Play on a real drum set
#3 Swim with dolphins
#4 Visit Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop in Paris
#5 Visit the Library of Congress
#6 Attend a Performance of Beethoven's Symphony #9 by a top notch Orchestra

#7 Visit Hawaii
#8 Visit Russia 
#9 Learn Russian