We would like to happily announce the creation of the first braille alphabet for the Rusyn language. This was done in coordination with Harris Mowbray, a specialist who has designed braille systems for other minority Slavic languages such as Kashubian, Silesian, and Sorbian. With this project, we hope that Rusyns without sight are better able to read works from our fantastic literary tradition in a way that is easy for them to do.

Below you will find the full alphabet, as well as some notes from Harris on his work. For those looking to begin writing in this new alphabet, we have also attached a short PDF with more additional info at the bottom of this article.

From the Creator

Hello everyone. I am Harris Mowbray, the creator of this new braille alphabet. As was stated earlier, I was recently on the news in both Germany and Poland for creating Braille for four Slavic languages; Silesian, Kashubian, and Upper/Lower Sorbian. Of course, in order to be fully equipped for the modern world, Rusyn should have a Braille alphabet too, so that visually impaired and blind Rusyns can read and write in their own language.

This system is designed to work with all dialects of Rusyn and operates with both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. We found the inclusion of both alphabets to be important, as many Rusyn within Slovakia do not know or use Cyrillic. The letter assignments are based on the international standards regarding Braille alphabets, meaning that someone who is literate in Braille for another language can easily learn Rusyn Braille.

Braille is a tactile system of reading for the blind composed of raised dots in 2×3 grids. Each individual grid pattern represents a letter (or punctuation mark/number). There are various systems of Braille to represent English, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, and many other major languages around the world. However, many smaller languages in the world do not have Braille systems yet – which is a problem that I have been trying to solve in the past few months by developing them myself.

I would like to thank Tomash Kalinic and Myhal’ Lyzchechko from RLS for their help in clarifying some elements of your language to me, as well as making sure the Latin and Cyrillic letters matched up. My hope is that in the future there may be articles and even books produced using this new system.

If you have any more questions regarding this project, please contact me by email: harrismowbray [at] yahoo.com