Things to know about Amharic
Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia. It is a member of the South Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
If your Amharic lessons require you to type Amharic characters, follow the instructions immediately below to do so. If your lessons use transliterated Amharic, see the Using Transliterated Amharic Lessons section further down.
Using Amharic Lessons
Amharic uses a unique alphabet, in which the basic form for each consonant sound is modified to indicate which of the seven vowel sounds follows it. It is written from left to right, the same as English.
There is no virtual keyboard for the Amharic language. However, this application provides a way to type Amharic roughly the way it sounds.
To type Amharic characters with this program's input method:
- Type the first sound of the character you want to type. For example, to type
, which makes the sound "ti", begin by pressing the t key. - Look for the character you want. If you do not see it, or if you need to narrow down the list, add the next sound. (For example, type 'ti' to narrow down the list of 't' characters.)
- If you type a combination that can only represent one character, that character will appear automatically. Otherwise, do one of the following:
- Click on the character you want.
- Type the number to the left of the character you want.
You will see a set of possible Amharic characters related to that sound:
To type Amharic numbers, type an apostrophe, then a numeral. You can then select the numeric character you need.
To type Amharic punctuation, start by typing the English version of the punctuation mark, then select the Amharic symbol you need.
Using Transliterated Amharic Lessons
Some Amharic lessons in this application may be transliterated - written with the letters of the Latin alphabet. Transliterated lessons can help you master vocabulary and pronunciation before tackling a new writing system.
You do not have to type actual Amharic characters in transliterated Amharic lessons. You can type the transliterations in any activity or assessment that requires typed answers.
The transliterated Amharic content may use the special character ï. See Typing accents or special characters for instructions on typing this character.