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Quickstart

This keyboard is designed to work intuitively with a standard (QWERTY) keyboard. This means that the Amharic sounds in this keyboard can be found by thinking of the most similar English letters. For example, you can type selam to get ሰላም.

As you can see, each Amharic character is typed with the base consonant first and then the vowel. For example, ጤ is typed T then ie.

Examples

Keyboard Details

The Amharic keyboard uses an intuitive phonetic system where the Amharic sounds are matched to the nearest English letters. You can think of how a word sounds in Amharic and then type it out with English.

Example: typing selam produces ሰላም

Because Amharic has more sounds than English, we sometimes have to adjust this rule. For example, English does not have ጠ and the closest similar letter would be t. In this case you should type T, for capital T:

Example: typing TienaysTlN produces ጤናይስጥልኝ

Notice that we used capital N also for ኝ and we needed both ie together to make the 5th ጠ letter, ጤ. When the letter you want to type does not appear when you hit the similar sounding key in English, try using the capital next. If typing the capital does not work, then try hitting the key two times:

Example: typing sselam produces ሠላም

Example: typing SSeHey produces ፀሐይ

Next, when you need to type the extra letters of Amharic like ሏ,ሟ,ኴ you can do so by typing an extra vowel after a u:

Example: typing mua produces ሟ

Example: typing guie produces ጔ

Finally, we must introduce a special rule for ' (apostrophe). Some words are spelt with a ሳድስ (6^th) letter followed by a vowel, like ርኤ in ገብርኤል. We use the apostrophe here to type gebr'iel to make sure we get ርኤ instead of ሬ.

Example: typing mel'ak produces መልአክ

Example: typing m'eeraf produces ምዕራፍ

Type Apostrophe twice after a 6^th order letter to make it appear in your document:

Example: typing mel''ak produces መል'አክ

We also use the “number sign” (“#” also know as the “hash mark”) for Ethiopic numbers, so #1 becomes ፩ and so on. If a # is needed in your document before a number, type it twice and: ##1 becomes #1. The double strike works for other punctuation as well, so typing ; once makes ፤ and a second time gives English semicolon ;.

See Typing in Amharic (English) or Typing in Amharic (Amharic) for full details on how to type all Amharic letters, numbers and punctuation.

Related Keyboard Layouts

Keyboard Layouts for other Ethiopic languages:

Awngi
Bench
Blin
Dizi
Geʾez
Meʾen
Mursi
Sebatbeit
Suri
Tigrigna (Eritrea)
Tigrigna (Ethiopia)

Other Internet Resources

Download the Amharic Keyboard for Keyman Desktop

More on the Amharic Writing System at Omniglot.com
More on the Amharic Language at Wikipedia.org

More on the Ge'ez Script at Omniglot.com
More on the Ge'ez Script at Wikipedia.org

Keyboard Authorship

This keyboard was created by the Geʾez Frontier Foundation. SIL International graciously acknowledges the contribution made by the authors in developing this keyboard and making it freely available for use with Keyman Desktop and KeymanWeb. Their effort assists in enabling people to communicate in their own language.

Copyright and Terms of Use

The Amharic keyboard layout for Keyman Desktop and KeymanWeb is Copyright 1997-2022 Geʾez Frontier Foundation and SIL International. It may be freely distributed and used under the terms of The MIT License.