Amharic is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the "official working" language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
Amharic is written with a version of the Ge'ez script known as Fidel. There is no standard way to transliterate Amharic into the Latin alphabet.
Vowels
The Amharic language uses seven vowels:
| Vowel | Sounds like |
|---|---|
| ä | again |
| u | moon |
| i | feet |
| a | father |
| e | way |
| ï | pin |
| o | war |
Script
The Ethiopian script is not strictly speaking an alphabet, but what is called a syllabary. This means that each letter or symbol usually represents a whole syllable.
There are thirty three basic shapes. These generally represent the consonants followed by the vowel ä. The basic shapes are altered in various ways to indicate a different vowel following the base consonant.
The Amharic syllabary is usually presented as a grid with the vowels in the horizontal axis and the consonants in the vertical axis. Below is the syllabary in the most common ha-hu order:
3 comments:
very cute post idea! how fun! jon will love it. he has been studying up on Amharic. he always asks the rosetta stone booth people if they have amharic. they always look at him funny and say no. haha.
this is really cool!
love you
-tim
I was just about to post something about Amharic and its relation to other Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew, etc.) but I thought that others (namely my wife...love you sweetheart!) would find it less than appealing. After reading this post, though, I think I might post my thoughts after all!
Post a Comment