Amharic, as one of the major Ethiopian languages, is spoken by millions of people.
According to linguists, Amharic is a branch of Afro-Asiatic group,
Related to Arabic and Hebrew. It is the second most spoken semetic language next to Arabic.
Amharic uses the Ge’ez script, alphabet or FIDEL (ፊደል) which is an ancient Ethiopic language.
The most commonly used alphabets are 33, each with seven horizontal orders
Called Ge’ez, Kab’i, Sa’lis, Ra’b’i, Hamis, sadis and Sa’b’i. therefore there are 231 major alphabets altogether.
The most notable features of Ge’ez, or Amharic Fidel are:-
The type of writing is ABUGIDA. (a kind of syllabary where the vowel is changed by modifying the base consonant symbol so that each vowel and consonant resemble one another.
It is written from left to right.
Each symbol represents a syllable consisting of a consonant plus a vowel.
There is no standard way of transliterating the ge’ez script into Latin.