Japanese is one of the most studied languages for Australian high school students \u2014 but few learn it like Jacinta McIntyre.<\/p>\n
The 14-year-old from Jamison High School in Penrith is blind and learning the language using braille.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been interested in learning Japanese since Year 7,” the now-Year 9 student said.<\/p>\n
“I’m really interested in the language and the culture and one day I hope to go there.”<\/p>\n
Jacinta studies the language through the New South Wales School of Languages, run by the state department of education.<\/p>\n
She is assisted by a team of people, including a Japanese teacher who she meets online each week to practice conversation, and two support teachers from the education department.<\/p>\n
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Jacinta\u00a0McIntyre has been learning Japanese for a few years now. (ABC News: Mary Lloyd)<\/p>\n
One of those support teachers is Melissa Marscham, who has been teaching braille for almost a decade.<\/p>\n
She helps translate online course modules from English, into both English braille and Japanese braille, which is then embossed onto the page which Jacinta can feel and read.<\/p>\n
Ms Marscham has been learning the language alongside Jacinta, leaning on a Japanese braille transcriber to ensure the work is accurate.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was producing for Jacinta was correct, the words were correct and how to space them is correct. That for me was essential,” Ms Marscham said.How does it work?<\/p>\n
Braille is a combination of raised bumps on a surface that people can feel using their fingers, and was invented in the 19th century by French teenager Louis Braille.<\/p>\n
It is centred around six cells and different combinations of those cells make up the language.<\/p>\n
In English, each combination of six cells represents letters, numbers or punctuation.<\/p>\n
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Braille characters are comprised of raised dots in a 2×3 cell. (ABC News: Mary Lloyd)<\/p>\n
But how does Jacinta learn such a visual language like Japanese \u2014 which has three writing systems \u2014 through touch?<\/p>\n
For words in two of those writing systems \u2014 hiragana and katakana \u2014 Ms Marscham will translate those into English, then into both English and Japanese braille.<\/p>\n
Kanji, the third writing system, needs to be translated into hiragana first.<\/p>\n
“[The language is] complicated \u2026 to learn because of the braille, the sentence structure and how precise you have to be,” Jacinta said.<\/p>\n