How it works
The Ethiopian letters, the fidel that writes Amharic and Tigrinya, row by row: every consonant in its seven vowel forms. After them come the w forms and the letters only Tigrinya uses.
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One sign, a consonant and a vowel
The plain letter is read with ä, and changes to its shape give u, i, a, e, ə and o: ለ ሉ ሊ ላ ሌ ል ሎ is lä, lu, li, la, le, lə, lo. The sixth form also writes the consonant alone. With glottal and pharyngeal consonants, ሀ and አ among them, the first form is said with a, like the fourth.
Geʽez letters and later ones
26 of the 34 rows are the letters of Geʽez, in the old order h, l, ḥ, m. Eight were added later, typically by a line drawn on top of a similar-sounding letter: በ bä gave ቨ vä, ተ tä gave ቸ čä.
- ሀ, ሐ, ኀ and ኸ are all said h in Amharic, so one sound has four rows.
- The w forms of ቀ, ኀ, ከ, ኸ and ገ come with five vowels; most other rows have one w form, wa.
Questions and answers
How many letters are in the Ethiopian alphabet?
Amharic has 34 basic letters, each in seven forms, which makes 238 signs, and 49 w forms besides: some 280 letters in all.
What are the Amharic letters in English?
Under each sign is its reading in Latin letters: ሀ hä, ለ lä, መ mä, ሰ sä, በ bä. The consonant comes first, then the vowel of its column: ä, u, i, a, e, ə or o.
Are Tigrinya letters the same as Amharic ones?
Nearly. Tigrinya letters are the same script with the same eight added rows. Tigrinya also has ቐ, a row Amharic does not have, with five w forms of its own.
What are Ethiopian characters called?
Fidel, written ፊደል, a word that means script, alphabet, letter or character. The script itself is called Geʽez or Ethiopic.