Ge'ez (ግዕዝ) or Ethiopic script
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This writing system is used in Ethiopia and Eritrea for several languages, notably Amharic and Tigrinya. It is actually a syllabary or "abuguida," meaning that characters represent a consonant and a vowel. It is also known in Amharic and Tigrinya as ፊደል ("fidäl"; sometimes written in English as "fidel").
A BBC article entitled "Ancient alphabet enters cyber age" (2000-1-19) describes the early process of adapting this script to computers (before Unicode). See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/609217.stm
There is an effort to collect information on the history of and contributors to computing in Ethiopic/Ge'ez at http://abyssiniagateway.net/fidel/legends/
Fonts
A good font for this script Abyssinica SIL.
Keyboards & input methods
The "Basic Ethiopic character picker" at http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/ethiopic/ lets one compose text in this script by clicking on the characters.
Other character pickers are available on the Lexilogos keyboard site:
- "amharique አማርኛ" - http://www.lexilogos.com/clavier/geez.htm
- "tigrigna ትግርኛ" - http://www.lexilogos.com/clavier/geez_tigrinya.htm
Resources
"Ethiopic Computing Information" (TLT, Penn State Univ.) http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/ethiopic.html
(see also References, below)
ISO-15924
Code | N° | English Name | Nom français | Property Value Alias | Date |
Ethi | 430 | Ethiopic (Ge‘ez) | éthiopien (ge‘ez, guèze) | Ethiopic | 2004-10-25 |
Source: Codes for the representation of names of scripts / Codes pour la représentation des noms d’écritures, http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html
References
Wikipedia, "Abuguida," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida
______, "Ge'ez alphabet," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%27ez_abugida
______, "Ge'ez language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%27ez_language (deals with both the script and the language)
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