66-692: Gofa Zuria ( Amharic "Greater Gofa Area") is a zone in the South Ethiopia Regional State of Ethiopia . It was previously one of the 17 Zones in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia . Within the SNNPR, Gofa Zone was bordered to the south by Kamba and Daramalo woredas, to the southwest by the Debub (South) Omo Zone , to the west by the Basketo special woreda , to
132-513: A holy language by the Rastafari religion and is widely used among its followers worldwide. Early Afro-Asiatic populations speaking proto- Semitic , proto- Cushitic and proto- Omotic languages would have diverged by the fourth or fifth millennium BC. Shortly afterwards, the proto-Cushitic and proto-Omotic groups would have settled in the Ethiopian highlands, with the proto-Semitic speakers crossing
198-513: A pidgin as early as the 4th century AD to enable communication between Aksumite soldiers speaking Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages, but this hypothesis has not garnered widespread acceptance. The preservation in Old Amharic of VSO word order and gutturals typical of Semitic languages, Cushitic influences shared with other Ethio-Semitic languages (especially those of the Southern branch), and
264-413: A change to writing the two consonants side by side. In the latter case, this combination may be indicated by a diacritic on one of the consonants or a change in the form of one of the consonants, e.g. the half forms of Devanagari. Generally, the reading order of stacked consonants is top to bottom, or the general reading order of the script, but sometimes the reading order can be reversed. The division of
330-453: A conjunct. This expedient is used by ISCII and South Asian scripts of Unicode .) Thus a closed syllable such as phaṣ requires two aksharas to write: फष् phaṣ . The Róng script used for the Lepcha language goes further than other Indic abugidas, in that a single akshara can represent a closed syllable: Not only the vowel, but any final consonant is indicated by a diacritic. For example,
396-473: A default vowel consonant such as फ does not take on a final consonant sound. Instead, it keeps its vowel. For writing two consonants without a vowel in between, instead of using diacritics on the first consonant to remove its vowel, another popular method of special conjunct forms is used in which two or more consonant characters are merged to express a cluster, such as Devanagari, as in अप्फ appha. (Some fonts display this as प् followed by फ, rather than forming
462-515: A diacritic, but writes all other vowels as full letters (similarly to Kurdish and Uyghur). This means that when no vowel diacritics are present (most of the time), it technically has an inherent vowel. However, like the Phagspa and Meroitic scripts whose status as abugidas is controversial (see below), all other vowels are written in-line. Additionally, the practice of explicitly writing all-but-one vowel does not apply to loanwords from Arabic and Persian, so
528-436: A letter modified to indicate the vowel. Letters can be modified either by means of diacritics or by changes in the form of the letter itself. If all modifications are by diacritics and all diacritics follow the direction of the writing of the letters, then the abugida is not an alphasyllabary. However, most languages have words that are more complicated than a sequence of CV syllables, even ignoring tone. The first complication
594-465: A letter representing just a consonant (C). This final consonant may be represented with: In a true abugida, the lack of distinctive vowel marking of the letter may result from the diachronic loss of the inherent vowel, e.g. by syncope and apocope in Hindi . When not separating syllables containing consonant clusters (CCV) into C + CV, these syllables are often written by combining the two consonants. In
660-413: A particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels". (This 'particular vowel' is referred to as the inherent or implicit vowel, as opposed to the explicit vowels marked by the 'diacritics'.) An alphasyllabary is defined as "a type of writing system in which the vowels are denoted by subsidiary symbols, not all of which occur in a linear order (with relation to the consonant symbols) that
726-828: A region known for hilly and undulating midland and upper lowland terrain. It is prone to floods and landslides. Due to terrain and weather patterns, less than one in five households is food secure. Food crops include maize , enset , sweet potatoes, taro , teff , and yams; income sources include butter and selling firewood. According to a 2004 report, Gofa Zuria had 75 kilometers of all-weather roads for an average road density of 44 kilometers per 1000 square kilometers. 6°25′N 36°55′E / 6.417°N 36.917°E / 6.417; 36.917 Amharic language Amharic ( / æ m ˈ h ær ɪ k / am- HARR -ik or / ɑː m ˈ h ɑːr ɪ k / ahm- HAR -ik ; native name : አማርኛ , romanized : Amarəñña , IPA: [amarɨɲːa] )
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#1732876451639792-416: A result of the spread of writing systems, independent vowels may be used to represent syllables beginning with a glottal stop , even for non-initial syllables. The next two complications are consonant clusters before a vowel (CCV) and syllables ending in a consonant (CVC). The simplest solution, which is not always available, is to break with the principle of writing words as a sequence of syllables and use
858-409: A segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary, similar to a diacritical mark . This contrasts with a full alphabet , in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad , in which vowel marking is absent, partial , or optional – in less formal contexts, all three types of
924-497: A syllable with the default vowel, in this case ka ( [kə] ). In some languages, including Hindi, it becomes a final closing consonant at the end of a word, in this case k . The inherent vowel may be changed by adding vowel mark ( diacritics ), producing syllables such as कि ki, कु ku, के ke, को ko. In many of the Brahmic scripts, a syllable beginning with a cluster is treated as a single character for purposes of vowel marking, so
990-439: A term in linguistics was proposed by Peter T. Daniels in his 1990 typology of writing systems . As Daniels used the word, an abugida is in contrast with a syllabary , where letters with shared consonant or vowel sounds show no particular resemblance to one another. Furthermore, an abugida is also in contrast with an alphabet proper, where independent letters are used to denote consonants and vowels. The term alphasyllabary
1056-420: A vowel can be written before, below or above a consonant letter, while the syllable is still pronounced in the order of a consonant-vowel combination (CV). The fundamental principles of an abugida apply to words made up of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables. The syllables are written as letters in a straight line, where each syllable is either a letter that represents the sound of a consonant and its inherent vowel or
1122-466: A vowel marker like ि -i, falling before the character it modifies, may appear several positions before the place where it is pronounced. For example, the game cricket in Hindi is क्रिकेट krikeṭ ; the diacritic for /i/ appears before the consonant cluster /kr/ , not before the /r/ . A more unusual example is seen in the Batak alphabet : Here the syllable bim is written ba-ma-i-(virama) . That is,
1188-403: A word into syllables for the purposes of writing does not always accord with the natural phonetics of the language. For example, Brahmic scripts commonly handle a phonetic sequence CVC-CV as CV-CCV or CV-C-CV. However, sometimes phonetic CVC syllables are handled as single units, and the final consonant may be represented: More complicated unit structures (e.g. CC or CCVC) are handled by combining
1254-730: Is a South Ethio-Semitic language, along with Gurage , Argobba , Harari , and others. Due to the social stratification of the time, the Cushitic Agaw adopted the South Ethio-Semitic language and eventually absorbed the Semitic population. Amharic thus developed with a Cushitic substratum and a Semitic superstratum . The northernmost South Ethio-Semitic speakers, or the proto-Amhara, remained in constant contact with their North Ethio-Semitic neighbors, evidenced by linguistic analysis and oral traditions. A 7th century southward shift of
1320-463: Is a non-segmental script that indicates syllable onsets and rimes , such as consonant clusters and vowels with final consonants. Thus it is not segmental and cannot be considered an abugida. However, it superficially resembles an abugida with the roles of consonant and vowel reversed. Most syllables are written with two letters in the order rime–onset (typically vowel-consonant), even though they are pronounced as onset-rime (consonant-vowel), rather like
1386-796: Is an Ethiopian Semitic language , which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages . It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas , and also serves as a lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns in Ethiopia . The language serves as the official working language of the Ethiopian federal government, and is also the official or working language of several of Ethiopia's federal regions . As of 2020, it has over 33,700,000 mother-tongue speakers and more than 25,100,000 second language speakers in 2019, making
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#17328764516391452-571: Is an abugida , and the graphemes of the Amharic writing system are called fidäl . It is derived from a modification of the Ge'ez script . Each character represents a consonant+vowel sequence, but the basic shape of each character is determined by the consonant, which is modified for the vowel. Some consonant phonemes are written by more than one series of characters: / ʔ / , / s / , / tsʼ / , and / h / (the last one has four distinct letter forms). This
1518-658: Is because these fidäl originally represented distinct sounds, but phonological changes merged them. The citation form for each series is the consonant+ ä form, i.e. the first column of the fidäl . The Amharic script is included in Unicode , and glyphs are included in fonts available with major operating systems. As in most other Ethiopian Semitic languages , gemination is contrastive in Amharic. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another; for example, alä 'he said', allä 'there is'; yǝmätall 'he hits', yǝmmättall 'he will be hit'. Gemination
1584-493: Is called an abugida ( አቡጊዳ ). The graphemes are called fidäl ( ፊደል ), which means "script", "alphabet", "letter", or "character". There is no universally agreed-upon Romanization of Amharic into Latin script . The Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common among linguists specializing in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Amharic has been the official working language of Ethiopia, language of
1650-499: Is congruent with their temporal order in speech". Bright did not require that an alphabet explicitly represent all vowels. ʼPhags-pa is an example of an abugida because it has an inherent vowel , but it is not an alphasyllabary because its vowels are written in linear order. Modern Lao is an example of an alphasyllabary that is not an abugida, for there is no inherent vowel and its vowels are always written explicitly and not in accordance to their temporal order in speech, meaning that
1716-490: Is difficult to draw a dividing line between abugidas and other segmental scripts. For example, the Meroitic script of ancient Sudan did not indicate an inherent a (one symbol stood for both m and ma, for example), and is thus similar to Brahmic family of abugidas. However, the other vowels were indicated with full letters, not diacritics or modification, so the system was essentially an alphabet that did not bother to write
1782-590: Is in Africa.' ልጁ Lǝǧ-u the boy ተኝቷል täññǝtʷall. asleep is ልጁ ተኝቷል Lǝǧ-u täññǝtʷall. {the boy} {asleep is} 'The boy is asleep.' ( -u is a definite article. Lǝǧ is 'boy'. Lǝǧu is 'the boy') አየሩ Ayyäru the weather ደስ däss pleasant Abugida An abugida ( / ˌ ɑː b uː ˈ ɡ iː d ə , ˌ æ b -/ ; from Ge'ez : አቡጊዳ , 'äbugīda ) – sometimes also called alphasyllabary , neosyllabary , or pseudo-alphabet – is
1848-469: Is mostly heard as the affricate sound [ t͡sʼ ]. The rhotic consonant is realized as a trill when geminated and a tap otherwise. The closed central unrounded vowel ⟨ə⟩ /ɨ/ and mid-central vowel ⟨ä⟩ /ə/ are generally fronted to [ ɪ ] and [ ɛ ], respectively, following palatal consonants , and generally retracted and rounded to [ ʊ ] and [ ɔ ], respectively, following labialized velar consonants . The Amharic script
1914-416: Is not indicated in Amharic orthography, but Amharic readers typically do not find this to be a problem. This property of the writing system is analogous to the vowels of Arabic and Hebrew or the tones of many Bantu languages , which are not normally indicated in writing. Ethiopian novelist Haddis Alemayehu , who was an advocate of Amharic orthography reform , indicated gemination in his novel Love to
1980-476: Is syllables that consist of just a vowel (V). For some languages, a zero consonant letter is used as though every syllable began with a consonant. For other languages, each vowel has a separate letter that is used for each syllable consisting of just the vowel. These letters are known as independent vowels , and are found in most Indic scripts. These letters may be quite different from the corresponding diacritics, which by contrast are known as dependent vowels . As
2046-481: Is the case for syllabaries, the units of the writing system may consist of the representations both of syllables and of consonants. For scripts of the Brahmic family, the term akshara is used for the units. In several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, abugida traditionally meant letters of the Ethiopic or Ge‘ez script in which many of these languages are written. Ge'ez is one of several segmental writing systems in
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2112-657: Is with North Indic scripts, used in Northern India, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, and Russia; and Southern Indic scripts, used in South India , Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia . South Indic letter forms are more rounded than North Indic forms, though Odia , Golmol and Litumol of Nepal script are rounded. Most North Indic scripts' full letters incorporate a horizontal line at the top, with Gujarati and Odia as exceptions; South Indic scripts do not. Indic scripts indicate vowels through dependent vowel signs (diacritics) around
2178-641: The Brahmi alphabet . Today they are used in most languages of South Asia (although replaced by Perso-Arabic in Urdu , Kashmiri and some other languages of Pakistan and India ), mainland Southeast Asia ( Myanmar , Thailand , Laos , Cambodia , and Vietnam ), Tibet ( Tibetan ), Indonesian archipelago ( Javanese , Balinese , Sundanese , Batak , Lontara , Rejang , Rencong , Makasar , etc.), Philippines ( Baybayin , Buhid , Hanunuo , Kulitan , and Aborlan Tagbanwa ), Malaysia ( Rencong ). The primary division
2244-443: The Ge'ez abugida (or fidel ), the base form of the letter (also known as fidel ) may be altered. For example, ሀ hä [hə] (base form), ሁ hu (with a right-side diacritic that does not alter the letter), ሂ hi (with a subdiacritic that compresses the consonant, so it is the same height), ህ hə [hɨ] or [h] (where the letter is modified with a kink in the left arm). In the family known as Canadian Aboriginal syllabics , which
2310-574: The Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī scripts ; the abjad in question is usually considered to be the Aramaic one, but while the link between Aramaic and Kharosthi is more or less undisputed, this is not the case with Brahmi. The Kharosthi family does not survive today, but Brahmi's descendants include most of the modern scripts of South and Southeast Asia . Ge'ez derived from a different abjad, the Sabean script of Yemen ;
2376-522: The Sinai Peninsula into Asia . A later return movement of peoples from South Arabia would have introduced the Semitic languages to Ethiopia. Based on archaeological evidence, the presence of Semitic speakers in the territory date to some time before 500 BC. Linguistic analysis suggests the presence of Semitic languages in Ethiopia as early as 2000 BC. Levine indicates that by the end of that millennium,
2442-527: The aksharas ; there is no vowel-killer mark. Abjads are typically written without indication of many vowels. However, in some contexts like teaching materials or scriptures , Arabic and Hebrew are written with full indication of vowels via diacritic marks ( harakat , niqqud ) making them effectively alphasyllabaries. The Arabic scripts used for Kurdish in Iraq and for Uyghur in Xinjiang , China, as well as
2508-504: The total number of speakers over 58,800,000. Amharic is the largest, most widely spoken language in Ethiopia, and the second most spoken mother-tongue in Ethiopia (after Oromo ). Amharic is also the second most widely spoken Semitic language in the world (after Arabic ). Amharic is written left-to-right using a system that grew out of the Geʽez script . The segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units
2574-463: The Ethiopianist tradition they are often transcribed with a dot below the letter. The notation of central vowels in the Ethiopianist tradition is shown in angled brackets. The voiced bilabial plosive /b/ is phonetically realized as a voiced labial approximant [β̞] medially between sonorants in non- geminated form. The fricative ejective / sʼ / is heard as a fricative ejective [ sʼ ], but
2640-519: The Grave by placing a dot above the characters whose consonants were geminated, but this practice is rare. Punctuation includes the following: One may construct simple Amharic sentences by using a subject and a predicate . Here are a few simple sentences: ኢትዮጵያ ʾItyop̣p̣ya Ethiopia አፍሪካ ʾAfrika Africa ውስጥ wǝsṭ in ናት nat is ኢትዮጵያ አፍሪካ ውስጥ ናት ʾItyop̣p̣ya ʾAfrika wǝsṭ nat {Ethiopia} {Africa} {in} {is} 'Ethiopia
2706-508: The Hebrew script of Yiddish , are fully vowelled, but because the vowels are written with full letters rather than diacritics (with the exception of distinguishing between /a/ and /o/ in the latter) and there are no inherent vowels, these are considered alphabets, not abugidas. The Arabic script used for South Azerbaijani generally writes the vowel /æ/ (written as ə in North Azerbaijani) as
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2772-672: The Indic scripts, the earliest method was simply to arrange them vertically, writing the second consonant of the cluster below the first one. The two consonants may also merge as conjunct consonant letters, where two or more letters are graphically joined in a ligature , or otherwise change their shapes. Rarely, one of the consonants may be replaced by a gemination mark, e.g. the Gurmukhi addak . When they are arranged vertically, as in Burmese or Khmer , they are said to be 'stacked'. Often there has been
2838-449: The alphabet used for writing the Geʽez language. There are 34 basic characters, each of which has seven forms depending on which vowel is to be pronounced in the syllable. There are also 49 "wa" letters, which form compound sounds involving "w." All together, the alphabet has some 280 letters. Until 2020 Amharic was the sole official language of Ethiopia. The 2007 census reported that Amharic
2904-527: The center of gravity of the Kingdom of Aksum and the ensuing integration and Christianization of the proto-Amhara also resulted in a high prevalence of Geʽez sourced lexicon in Amharic. Some time after the 9th century AD, Amharic diverged from its closest relative, Argobba , probably due to religious differences as the Argobba adopted Islam. In 1983, Lionel Bender proposed that Amharic may have been constructed as
2970-463: The consonants to the point that they must be considered modifications of the form of the letters. Children learn each modification separately, as in a syllabary; nonetheless, the graphic similarities between syllables with the same consonant are readily apparent, unlike the case in a true syllabary . Though now an abugida, the Ge'ez script , until the advent of Christianity ( ca. AD 350 ), had originally been what would now be termed an abjad . In
3036-476: The consonants, often including a sign that explicitly indicates the lack of a vowel. If a consonant has no vowel sign, this indicates a default vowel. Vowel diacritics may appear above, below, to the left, to the right, or around the consonant. The most widely used Indic script is Devanagari , shared by Hindi , Bihari , Marathi , Konkani , Nepali , and often Sanskrit . A basic letter such as क in Hindi represents
3102-493: The core inhabitants of Greater Ethiopia would have consisted of dark-skinned agropastoralists speaking Afro-Asiatic languages of the Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic branches. Other scholars such as Messay Kebede and Daniel E. Alemu argue that migration across the Red Sea was defined by reciprocal exchange, if it even occurred at all, and that Ethio-Semitic-speaking ethnic groups should not be characterized as foreign invaders. Amharic
3168-566: The courts, the language of trade and everyday communications and of the military since the late 12th century. The Amhara nobles supported the Zagwe prince Lalibela in his power struggle against his brothers which led him to make Amharic Lessana Negus as well as fill the Amhara nobles in the top positions of his Kingdom. The appellation of "language of the king" ( Ge'ez : ልሳነ ነጋሢ ; "Lǝssanä nägaśi," Amharic : የነጋሢ ቋንቋ "Yä-nägaśi qʷanqʷa") and its use in
3234-457: The examples above to sets of syllables in the Japanese hiragana syllabary: か ka , き ki , く ku , け ke , こ ko have nothing in common to indicate k; while ら ra , り ri , る ru , れ re , ろ ro have neither anything in common for r , nor anything to indicate that they have the same vowels as the k set. Most Indian and Indochinese abugidas appear to have first been developed from abjads with
3300-405: The most common vowel. Several systems of shorthand use diacritics for vowels, but they do not have an inherent vowel, and are thus more similar to Thaana and Kurdish script than to the Brahmic scripts. The Gabelsberger shorthand system and its derivatives modify the following consonant to represent vowels. The Pollard script , which was based on shorthand, also uses diacritics for vowels;
3366-451: The northwest by Dawro Zone , to the north by the Dawro Zone , and to the east by Kucha . The administrative center of Gofa Zone is Sawla ; other towns included Bulki . Gofa Zone is administratively subdivided into the aforementioned towns of Bulki and Sawla and the seven woredas of Demba Gofa , Gada , Geze Gofa , Melokoza , Oyda , Uba Debretsehay , and Zala . Gofa Zone is part of
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#17328764516393432-475: The number of geographically distinct Cushitic languages that have influenced Amharic at different points in time (e.g. Oromo influence beginning in the 16th century) support a natural evolution of Amharic from a Proto-Ethio-Semitic language with considerable Cushitic influences (similar to Gurage, Tigrinya, etc.). The Amharic ejective consonants correspond to the Proto-Semitic " emphatic consonants ." In
3498-423: The placements of the vowel relative to the consonant indicates tone . Pitman shorthand uses straight strokes and quarter-circle marks in different orientations as the principal "alphabet" of consonants; vowels are shown as light and heavy dots, dashes and other marks in one of 3 possible positions to indicate the various vowel-sounds. However, to increase writing speed, Pitman has rules for "vowel indication" using
3564-454: The position of the /i/ vowel in Devanagari, which is written before the consonant. Pahawh is also unusual in that, while an inherent rime /āu/ (with mid tone) is unwritten, it also has an inherent onset /k/ . For the syllable /kau/ , which requires one or the other of the inherent sounds to be overt, it is /au/ that is written. Thus it is the rime (vowel) that is basic to the system. It
3630-553: The positioning or choice of consonant signs so that writing vowel-marks can be dispensed with. As the term alphasyllabary suggests, abugidas have been considered an intermediate step between alphabets and syllabaries . Historically, abugidas appear to have evolved from abjads (vowelless alphabets). They contrast with syllabaries, where there is a distinct symbol for each syllable or consonant-vowel combination, and where these have no systematic similarity to each other, and typically develop directly from logographic scripts . Compare
3696-612: The royal court are otherwise traced to the Amhara Emperor Yekuno Amlak . It is one of the official languages of Ethiopia , together with other regions like Oromo , Somali , Afar , and Tigrinya . Amharic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Southwest Semitic group and is related to Geʽez , or Ethiopic, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church; Amharic is written in a slightly modified form of
3762-467: The script does not have an inherent vowel for Arabic and Persian words. The inconsistency of its vowel notation makes it difficult to categorize. The imperial Mongol script called Phagspa was derived from the Tibetan abugida, but all vowels are written in-line rather than as diacritics. However, it retains the features of having an inherent vowel /a/ and having distinct initial vowel letters. Pahawh Hmong
3828-503: The script may be termed "alphabets". The terms also contrast them with a syllabary , in which a single symbol denotes the combination of one consonant and one vowel. Related concepts were introduced independently in 1948 by James Germain Février (using the term néosyllabisme ) and David Diringer (using the term semisyllabary ), then in 1959 by Fred Householder (introducing the term pseudo-alphabet ). The Ethiopic term "abugida"
3894-435: The syllable [sok] would be written as something like s̥̽, here with an underring representing /o/ and an overcross representing the diacritic for final /k/ . Most other Indic abugidas can only indicate a very limited set of final consonants with diacritics, such as /ŋ/ or /r/ , if they can indicate any at all. In Ethiopic or Ge'ez script , fidels (individual "letters" of the script) have "diacritics" that are fused with
3960-620: The various techniques above. Examples using the Devanagari script There are three principal families of abugidas, depending on whether vowels are indicated by modifying consonants by diacritics, distortion, or orientation. Lao and Tāna have dependent vowels and a zero vowel sign, but no inherent vowel. Indic scripts originated in India and spread to Southeast Asia , Bangladesh , Sri Lanka , Nepal , Bhutan , Tibet , Mongolia , and Russia . All surviving Indic scripts are descendants of
4026-475: The vowel diacritic and virama are both written after the consonants for the whole syllable. In many abugidas, there is also a diacritic to suppress the inherent vowel, yielding the bare consonant. In Devanagari , प् is p, and फ् is ph . This is called the virāma or halantam in Sanskrit. It may be used to form consonant clusters , or to indicate that a consonant occurs at the end of a word. Thus in Sanskrit,
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#17328764516394092-522: The world, others include Indic/Brahmic scripts and Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics . The word abugida is derived from the four letters, ' ä, bu, gi, and da , in much the same way that abecedary is derived from Latin letters a be ce de , abjad is derived from the Arabic a b j d , and alphabet is derived from the names of the two first letters in the Greek alphabet , alpha and beta . Abugida as
4158-469: Was chosen as a designation for the concept in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels . In 1992, Faber suggested "segmentally coded syllabically linear phonographic script", and in 1992 Bright used the term alphasyllabary , and Gnanadesikan and Rimzhim, Katz, & Fowler have suggested aksara or āksharik . Abugidas include the extensive Brahmic family of scripts of Tibet, South and Southeast Asia, Semitic Ethiopic scripts, and Canadian Aboriginal syllabics . As
4224-438: Was inspired by the Devanagari script of India, vowels are indicated by changing the orientation of the syllabogram . Each vowel has a consistent orientation; for example, Inuktitut ᐱ pi, ᐳ pu, ᐸ pa; ᑎ ti, ᑐ tu, ᑕ ta . Although there is a vowel inherent in each, all rotations have equal status and none can be identified as basic. Bare consonants are indicated either by separate diacritics, or by superscript versions of
4290-467: Was spoken by 21.6 million native speakers in Ethiopia. More recent sources state the number of first-language speakers in 2018 as nearly 32 million, with another 25 million second-language speakers in Ethiopia. Additionally, 3 million emigrants outside of Ethiopia speak the language. Most of the Ethiopian Jewish communities in Ethiopia and Israel speak Amharic. Furthermore, Amharic is considered
4356-489: Was suggested for the Indic scripts in 1997 by William Bright , following South Asian linguistic usage, to convey the idea that, "they share features of both alphabet and syllabary." The formal definitions given by Daniels and Bright for abugida and alphasyllabary differ; some writing systems are abugidas but not alphasyllabaries, and some are alphasyllabaries but not abugidas. An abugida is defined as "a type of writing system whose basic characters denote consonants followed by
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