ፊደል Fidäl

The Gəʿəz script — fidäl — is an abugida: the vowel is carried by a change to the consonant's own shape rather than by a separate letter. Gəʿəz uses 26 consonants, each in seven orders, and the change is consistent enough down each column that the table below is most of what there is to learn — that, and the handful of labialised letters underneath it. Amharic and Tigrinya are written with the same script and a few added letters, so this types all three.

Word of the day

ወርቅ wärq noun gold

See all the words, or type this one yourself below.

a and e are ambiguous as to vowel order, so several readings are offered — Tab cycles them. Write ä ǝ ā ē for an exact order, and ḥ ḫ ś ʿ ṣ for a particular letter; plain h s ʾ ts give the commonest one. For the letters below the syllabary, qh kh ch reach ቐ ኸ ጨ — as do q k ch, further down the list.

The syllabary

Consonant	ግዕዝ 1 · ä	ካዕብ 2 · u	ሣልስ 3 · i	ራብዕ 4 · a	ኃምስ 5 · e	ሳድስ 6 · ə	ሳብዕ 7 · o
h
l
ḥ
m
ś
r
s
q
b
t
ḫ
n
ʾ
k
w
ʿ
z
y
d
g
ṭ
ṗ
ṣ
ḍ
f
p

The labialised letters

Four consonants can be pronounced with the lips rounded — labialised — and the script gives each of them a series of its own rather than a mark on the plain letter. They are two orders short: a rounded consonant will not carry a rounded vowel, so there is no ʷu and no ʷo, and the table below has a gap where each would be. These are ordinary Gəʿəz, not an ornament — ኵሉ kʷəllu "all" and ኰነነ kʷännänä "he judged" are everyday words. Type them by putting w between the consonant and the vowel: kwa gives ኳ, gwi gives ጒ.

You may have been taught these as the ዲቃላ letters, or as the compound ones. Both names are current and both point here; labialised is the name used on this page because it says what the letters do, and because nothing here is a compound of two letters — ኳ does not come apart into ከ and ዋ.

Consonant	ግዕዝ 1 · ä	ካዕብ 2 · u	ሣልስ 3 · i	ራብዕ 4 · a	ኃምስ 5 · e	ሳድስ 6 · ə	ሳብዕ 7 · o
qʷ
ḫʷ
kʷ
gʷ

Letters Gəʿəz never used

Unicode's block also carries letters added for sounds Amharic and Tigrinya have and Gəʿəz does not. They will not appear in a classical text, but they are half the letters on the page in a modern one — so they are here, kept apart rather than mixed into the syllabary above. They type the same way.

Consonant	ግዕዝ 1 · ä	ካዕብ 2 · u	ሣልስ 3 · i	ራብዕ 4 · a	ኃምስ 5 · e	ሳድስ 6 · ə	ሳብዕ 7 · o	Used for
š								Amharic, Tigrinya
q̠								Tigrinya
v								Amharic — mostly loanwords
č								Amharic, Tigrinya
ñ								Amharic, Tigrinya
ḵ								Amharic, Tigrinya
ž								Amharic, Tigrinya
ǧ								Amharic, Tigrinya
č̣								Amharic, Tigrinya

And their labialised letters

Tigrinya labialises its two extra letters as well, on the same pattern and with the same two gaps.

Consonant	ግዕዝ 1 · ä	ካዕብ 2 · u	ሣልስ 3 · i	ራብዕ 4 · a	ኃምስ 5 · e	ሳድስ 6 · ə	ሳብዕ 7 · o	Used for
q̠ʷ								Tigrinya
ḵʷ								Tigrinya

Amharic and Tigrinya then take labialisation much further than Gəʿəz ever did, to almost every consonant in the script — but with one letter each rather than a whole series, and always in the fourth order. So ሏ but no lʷi or lʷe. lwa types the first of these, swa the sixth.

The numerals

The script has its own numerals, and they are not fidäl — they are the Greek alphabetic numerals, borrowed early and given the overline and underline that mark them off from letters. There is no zero and no place value: the signs below are added up to ninety-nine, and multiplied above it. ፳፻፲፰ is twenty, a hundred, ten, eight — 20 × 100 + 18, so 2018. A leading ፩ is left off before a multiplier, which is why a hundred is ፻ and not ፩፻.

Units

Tens

Above

Type a number into the box at the top and it converts too — 2018 gives ፳፻፲፰. Numbers past a hundred million are honoured, though nothing you will ever read uses them. The ፩፪፫ / 123 switch beside the box turns that off, and is the same choice the calendar offers: set it to 123 and digits stay as you typed them, here and there.

About Gəʿəz

How did the script get its vowels?

It enters the record as an abjad, writing consonants and leaving the vowels to the reader — where it came from before that is disputed. Sometime in the Aksumite period it gained them, each consonant taking seven shapes instead of one, and became the abugida it still is. The first fully vocalised texts are inscriptions from the reign of Ezana in the fourth century, and he is often credited with the change; but a single vocalised letter appears on a coin of his predecessor Wazeba, so the shift was probably already under way when he came to it.

Is Gəʿəz still spoken?

Not as anyone's mother tongue, and not for a long time — estimates of when it stopped being an everyday language span several centuries and the question is genuinely unsettled. But it never fell out of use. It remained the language of writing and of worship long after it left the street, and it is still the liturgical language of Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity — in Ethiopia, in Eritrea and across the diaspora — and was long the liturgical language of the Beta Israel as well. It is still taught in church schools, still sung. A language read aloud daily by many thousands of people is alive in the way Latin is alive.

How is it related to Amharic and Tigrinya?

Closely — but not as parent to child, which is the common assumption and probably wrong. Tigre and Tigrinya are the nearest living relatives, sharing roughly 71% and 68% of their vocabulary with Gəʿəz; Amharic sits further off. Most linguists now treat them as sister languages descended from a shared ancestor rather than from Gəʿəz itself. What is not in doubt is how much they hold in common — the script, and enough vocabulary that the word of the day above is often a word you already knew.

What is written in it?

The Bible first, translated from Greek in the centuries after Aksum's conversion, and with it a canon wider than any other church's: 1 Enoch and Jubilees survive complete in Gəʿəz and nowhere else, which is why the language matters to scholars with no other interest in Ethiopia or Eritrea. Beyond scripture there is the Kebra Nagast, the Fetha Nagast, royal chronicles, lives of saints, and qene — a poetic form built on deliberate double meaning, in which a plain surface reading conceals a second one underneath.

Why does the calendar have thirteen months?

Twelve months of thirty days leaves five days over — six in a leap year — and rather than distribute them the calendar keeps them together as a thirteenth month, Ṗagumen. The year runs from Mäskäräm, which falls on 11 September, or the 12th in the year before a Gregorian leap year. English calls it the Ethiopian calendar, and that is the name used here because it is the one people look for, but it is kept in Eritrea too and the reckoning behind it is older than either state. You can see the whole of it, and the feasts that move with the church year, on the calendar.