Amharic, the language itself.
Before the AI, before the lessons — the language. Its script, its sounds, its centuries of manuscripts and novels, and its fight to live fully in the digital age. This is where we talk about Amharic for its own sake.
The script, the sounds, the story.
Three doors into the language — how it’s written, how it works, and where it comes from.
About Amharic
What Amharic is: a Semitic language with tens of millions of speakers, its own script, and deep roots — explained plainly.
Read the overview → The script ፊደልThe Feedel
Not 231 shapes — 33 families of seven. The alphabet as a system, with the chart, the A·B·C bridge, and the interactive explorer.
Meet the Feedel → Literary heritage ልብ ወለድBorn of the Heart
How a government book catalogue quietly tells the story of Amharic literature — from hand-copied manuscripts to the 1908 novel whose title became the word “novel” itself.
Read the feature →More of the language’s story is coming.
We’re recovering Amharic texts locked in pre-Unicode fonts and bringing their stories back into the digital record — the archive has more to say.
Commentary & Literature
A 62-page study of Ethiopian commentary tradition, history and literature — currently being recovered from a legacy typeface.
The Sounds of Amharic
The seven vowels, the ejectives, and the music of the language — with real voices, once our recording campaign completes.
Script & Encoding
How the Feedel survived the move to computers — and the legacy-font problem still locking decades of Amharic text away.