How to Pronounce each Letter in the Amharic Alphabet – with Audio

Amharic is a Semitic language, spoken by more than 25 million people around the world, and it has its own unique alphabet. If you're new to the language, learning how to pronounce the letters can be a daunting task. But fear not! With a little practice and guidance, you can master the pronunciation of each letter in the Amharic alphabet.

How to pronounce the Amharic Alphabet

The Amharic alphabet is known as "fidäl" and consists of 34 base characters (Some mistakenly say they are only 33, but you can count them in the table below). each of the base characters can be modified in six different ways to create a total of 238 distinct characters. There is also a seventh way of modifying some of these 34 base characters resulting in special letters in the Amharic alphabet known as "Hybrid letters" (ዲቃላ ፊደላት - Diqala Fidelat), we'll also see those! Unlike the English alphabet, which has both consonants and vowels, the Amharic alphabet has only consonants. And for this reason, Amharic and Geez are grouped under Abjad writing systems, along with other languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu. However, each consonant has an inherent vowel sound, which is sometimes represented by a small symbol above or below the letter. The letters in the Amharic alphabet have sounds that are similar to English, while others are completely different. It's important to pay attention to the small symbols above or below each letter, as they can change the pronunciation of the consonant For example, the letter ለ (lä) is pronounced like the "lu" in "luxury”. But when it has a small inward circle on its left foot and becomes “ል”, it's pronounced like the "ll" in "bull." Another important thing to note is that the pronunciation of some consonants in the Amharic alphabet are repeated, but depending on the specific type of character used the meaning of a word, although it sounds the same, can be different. For example, the letters ስ, and ሥ are pronounced “sə” – like the “s” in “slow”. But in the Amharic language, the words “ንጉስ”, and “ንጉሥ”, although both are pronounced “Negus”, have two different meanings. This probably is the most ignored rule when writing in Amharic language, yet strongly recommended and still in use by many authors and scholars. So, don’t get confused or think it is some kind of mistake when you see repeated similar pronunciation for different characters. Some of the repeated sounds in the Amharic alphabet are; • ሀ, ሃ, ሐ, ሓ, ኻ, ኀ, and ኃ - pronounced “hā”, like the “ha” in “Habit”. • ሰ, and ሠ - pronounced like the “se” in “self”. • አ, ኣ, ዐ, and ዓ - pronounced like the first “a” in “Abandon”. Learning how to pronounce each letter in the Amharic alphabet may seem overwhelming at first, but with practice, it will become easier. It's also important to learn how to read and write letters, as this will help you to recognize words and understand the language more fully. So don't be afraid to dive in and start learning!

Hybrid letters in Amharic Alphabet

Being an Abjad system language, Amharic language needs to assign a character to as many sounds in the language as possible. So in order to address diphthong or digraph sounds, which are sounds created by combining two letters; the Amharic language uses Hybrid letters (Diqala Fidelat - ዲቃላ ፊደላት). These are not brand new letters but added modifications to the main letters in order to indicate the new sounds. For example, the “sua” sound in the Amharic third person feminine pronoun "እስዋ" was developed into a distinct letter as "ሷ". The same way, other new letters are formed from each main letter of the Alphabet: fua = ፉዋአ = ፏ, lua = ሉዋአ = ሏ, tua = ቱዋአ = ቷ, etc.

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