Geʽez Braille Explained

Geʽez Braille is a collection of braille alphabets for the Ethiopian languages that are written in Geʽez script in print. Letter values are mostly in line with international usage. At least the Amharic language is supported; perhaps the extended letters needed for Tigrinya, Tigre and possibly other Ethiopian languages are supported as well, but if so that is not recorded in available references.

Amharic alphabet

Amharic Braille may be an abugida like the print Geʽez script, but the inherent vowel is epenthetic ə pronounced as //ɨ// rather than a pronounced as //ɐ//. The same letter is used for syllables ending in the vowel ə as for the bare consonant. Other syllables are written with this letter plus a second letter for the vowel. Thus the system is very close to a true alphabet, with any inherent ə vowel often but evidently not always predictable.

The photograph of the syllabic chart at right shows a blank cell being used for the inherent vowel ə. That is perhaps an artefact of the presentation; UNESCO (2013) shows that is simply not written.^[1]

Amharic Braille alphabet

-ä	-u	-i	-a	-e	-o	-wa
h ሀ	l ለ	ḥ ሐ	m መ	ś ሠ	r ረ	s ሰ
š ሸ	ḳ ቀ	b በ	t ተ	č ቸ	ḫ ኀ	n ነ
ñ ኘ	ʾ አ	k ከ	x ኸ	w ወ	ʿ ዐ	z ዘ
ž ዠ	y የ	d ደ	ǧ ጀ	g ገ	ṭ ጠ	č̣ ጨ
p̣ ጰ	ṣ ጸ	ṣ́ ፀ	f ፈ	p ፐ	v ቨ

is not the default vowel in print Amharic, which is instead (braille). For most consonants, a is the only vowel that can occur in a Cw- syllable, so -wa has its own letter: . CwV and CyV syllables other than -wa are written with medial w and y:

Amharic syllables

ገ gä	ጉ gu	ጊ gi	ጋ ga	ጌ ge	ግ gə	ጎ go
ጐ gwä		ጒ gwi	ጓ gwa	ጔ gwe	ጕ gwə

Note that -wə is written, as if it were -wu, a combination that does not occur in print.

Numbers

Ethiopic digits do not follow the international pattern. They are also circumfixed with ... :

፩	1		፲	10
፪	2		፳	20
፫	3		፴	30
፬	4		፵	40
፭	5		፶	50
፮	6		፷	60
፯	7		፸	70
፰	8		፹	80
፱	9		፺	90
፲	10		፻	100	[2]

Western numbers are marked with as in other braille alphabets.

Punctuation

Native punctuation is as follows:

The last is yizet, one of several interlinear tone marks.

There is also Western punctuation:

Print	« ... »	‹ ... ›	(...)	[... ]
Braille	...	...	...	...

Notes and References

1. Unesco (2013), World Braille Usage, 3rd ed.
2. The source has ፻ 100 .