I took a cab today and the driver was a friendly, cosmopolitan, refined Ethiopian guy who told me that he spoke four (!) languages. Then he showed me an Ethiopian newspaper, and I was struck by how attractive the script is. The script here is from the Ethiopian Embassy, where there's also an English translation.
Also, my last post about Malaysian was updated because I got a response from Jordan.
12 comments:
Very pretty indeed! Different writing systems have always interested me. So many ways to write languages...We've come a long way since folks were using cuneiform, I suppose! ;)
I'm a fan as well. I see a lot of signs in Amharic (and also, I presume, in Tigrigna). As a slight aside, Google has localized their search engine for Amharic and Tigrinya, but doesn't index either.
Too bad I can't read all the languages out there. I can barely find the discipline to improve my Japanese.
Just think: if I hadn't asked the taxi driver what language he speaks (after he finished a cell phone convo with someone from his language group), I would've never discovered this cool language.
Neat info, Pat--and welcome to this blog.
Yes, it's a neat script. Have you seen written Burmese? It looks like gelcaps in various stages of development. Well, to me it does.
Your gelcap description is great. A while ago I got a book about the Burmese language, so I saw that cute script. Maybe I should do a "Burmese is cute" post.
We don't have a similar expression in English. I've never heard such writings described that way. I don't even know what Buginese is, so I should do a post about it.
It looks like Hebrew, doesn't it?
I think it's quite different--Hebrew looks more square and boxy.
The Ethiopian (GE'EZ) alphabet (Fidel) is the only native Alphabet to Africa. It has 7 vowels, some 35 Consonants. The script is used same way the Roman letters are used, which means represent every monolithic sound by a consonant. The Consonant+vowel represent the variations of every monolithic sound just like the Roman Alphabet.
The only difference is, although there are unique letters available for each vowel, the variation of the consonants are designated by marking the consonant itself instead of writing a second letter or Fidel for the vowel.
This marked consonants are preset and are included in the Fidel matrix. So some say the Fidel has 35x7 letters.
Additionally because the consonant+vowel variation symbols or letters or Fidel is preset, it is difficult to write words and sentences that make it difficult to write had there been no such preset letters. The hassle of spelling and pronunciations we see in most language that use the Roman letters are not existent with the Fidel.
The Fidel has one basic problem though, it doesn't yield a way to differentiate explosive or light sounds that are represented with the same letter. So you are left to decide from the context. It a bit tough because the language is full of such syllables.
I was wrong above the Fidel matrix has 26x7 letters.
Thanks for the info--I knew nothing about the language, other than I like how it looks.
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