The Tigrinya Writing System

The Tigrinya writing system is one variant of what is often referred to as the "Ethiopic" writing system or "Ethiopic syllabary". It is a slight variant of the writing system used for Amharic and for Ge'ez [gɨʔɨz], the classical language still in use as the liturgical language of Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christians. The most salient graphical units in this writing system represent a consonant followed by a vowel. Characters representing the same consonant followed by different vowels are similar in shape. For example, here are the characters representing: /he/, /hu/, /hi/, /ha/, /hie/, /h/ and /ho/:

As a result, the writing system is usually displayed as a two-dimensional matrix in which the rows contain units beginning with the same consonant and the columns contain units ending in the same vowel. The columns are traditionally known as "orders". The first order, in Tigrinya, represents the vowel /e/, the second the vowel /u/, the third the vowel /i/, the fourth the vowel /a/, the fifth the vowel (really diphthong) /ie/, and the seventh the vowel /o/. The sixth order represents the consonant alone or followed by the vowel /ɨ/, which, however, is subject to considerable allophonic variation. The literature on Tigrinya suggests that this vowel is always epenthetic, so the sixth order simply represents the consonant by itself.

This writing system is sometimes called a "syllabary" because most characters represent a consonant plus a vowel. However, it isn't really a syllabary, since closed syllables must be written with at least two characters. For example, a CVC syllable such as /t'ut'/   ጡጥ "cotton" requires two characters, one (ጡ) for the initial CV, the second (ጥ) for the final C.

In the chart below, the column Unicode Name gives the Unicode name for the first order in the row. The names for the remaining orders can then be obtained by substituting for a the Unicode names for the vowels. These are: a, u, i, aa, ee, e, o. Similarly, the column Unicode Code gives the Unicode codepoint, in hexadecimal, for the first order in the row. The column labelled Sem gives the notation commonly found in works by specialists in Semitic languages. The column labelled Yudit gives the key sequence for the consonant in question when using the default Ethiopic keymap for the Yudit Unicode editor.

Click on a character to hear the sound.

Here is the order in which the letters were read aloud for the sound files. My understanding is that this is approximately the traditional order for recitation. Note, however, that a couple of old-fashioned letters have been included, along with compound forms for labio-velars. The order of vowels is not shown since it is the same as in the chart above.
PDF file
Unicode file

Tigrinya has its own set of punctuation symbols, listed below. They are similar to those used for Amharic, but the usage is not identical. The traditional punctuation is not used in writing numbers. Rather, numbers are written as they are in English, with a comma every three digits and a decimal point.

There is a set of numerals, shown below. These are no longer in common use in Eritrea, where they have been replaced by the ``Arabic'' numerals, that is, the same ones used in English.

Last modified 2003/11/16 20:52.