Tigrinya Alphabet & Letters

Tigrinya, ትግርኛ in its own letters, is written in fidel (ፊደል), the Ge'ez or Ethiopic script that also writes Amharic and the old church language Ge'ez. It is an abugida: every letter is a consonant with a vowel built in, and each consonant comes in seven forms, called orders. The first order carries ä; the others add u, i, a, e, ə and o with a small stroke, ring or change of leg: ለ lä, ሉ lu, ሊ li, ላ la, ሌ le, ል lə, ሎ lo.

The sixth order does double duty: it is the consonant with a short ə, or the consonant with no vowel at all. ሰላም (selam, hello and peace) is ሰ sä + ላ la + ም m, and ትግርኛ (tigriñña) is ት t + ግ g + ር r + ኛ ñña. The grid above lists 35 consonants in the traditional fidel order, which starts ሀ ለ ሐ መ (h, l, ḥ, m) rather than A B C, and children learn it by chanting the rows aloud, ሀ ሁ ሂ ሃ ሄ ህ ሆ.

Tigrinya letters: ቐ, ኸ and the throat sounds ሐ and ዐ

Two rows belong to Tigrinya more than to any neighbour. ቐ and ኸ are the soft, fricative partners of ቀ (q) and ከ (k): after a vowel, k and q are said with a rasp in the throat, like the ch of Scottish loch, and Tigrinya spelling shows it. "How are you?" to a man is ከመይ ኣለኻ? (kemey aleẖa): the k at the start of the word is ከ, the one after a vowel is ኻ. The same letter is in ንስኻ (nsẖa, you), and ቐ is in the city name መቐለ (Mekelle) and in የቐንየለይ (yeq̱enyeley, thank you).

Tigrinya also keeps the throat consonants of old Ge'ez that Amharic lost: ሐ ḥ is a strong h from deep in the throat, different from plain ሀ h, and ዐ ʿ is its voiced partner, different from the glottal stop አ. Number words show both: ሓደ (ḥade, one) and ዓሰርተ (ʿaserte, ten). A word that starts with a plain a is usually written with the fourth-order ኣ, as in ኣስመራ (Asmara) and ኣርባዕተ (four), where Amharic would write አ.

Three rows are inherited letters with no sound of their own in Tigrinya: ሠ, ኀ and ፀ. Modern Tigrinya spelling, especially in Eritrea, writes ሰ, ሐ and ጸ instead, but modern Ethiopian Tigrinya normally uses ፀ for the last sound; power is ሓይሊ where Amharic keeps ኃይል. ቨ v, ዠ zh and ቸ ch are used mostly in loanwords.

The w-columns hold the labialized letters, a consonant followed by a w sound: ቋንቋ (qwanqwa, language), ጓል (gwal, girl or daughter). Six consonants, ቀ ቐ ኀ ከ ኸ ገ, have a full set of five w-forms; most others have just one, like ሏ lwa or ሟ mwa. Fidel does not show doubled consonants, which matter in Tigrinya as in Amharic; the combining mark ፟ exists for them in Unicode but is rarely written.

Tigrinya punctuation and Ge'ez numbers ። ፣ ፩

A Tigrinya sentence ends with ።, four dots in a square, not with a single full stop. ፣ is the comma, ፤ the semicolon and ፦ introduces speech or a list. The two dots ፡ once separated every word in manuscripts and inscriptions; modern text uses a space, and ፡ survives in titles and on signs. There is an Ethiopic question mark ፧, but most people type ? and ! as in English. Quotations are often set in « ».

The Ge'ez numbers are ፩ ፪ ፫ ፬ ፭ ፮ ፯ ፰ ፱ for 1 to 9, ፲ ፳ ፴ ፵ ፶ ፷ ፸ ፹ ፺ for the tens, ፻ for 100 and ፼ for 10,000. They come from Greek letters and have no zero, so numbers are written in parts: 11 is ፲፩ (ten one), 2019 is ፳፻፲፱ (twenty hundreds, nineteen). Everyday Tigrinya uses 1 2 3 for prices, phone numbers and sums; Ge'ez numbers appear in church books, on calendars and in formal or decorative writing.

How to type Tigrinya on a computer or phone

Most Tigrinya keyboards are phonetic: you type a consonant and then a vowel on an ordinary English layout, and the software builds the letter. s + e gives ሰ, s + u gives ሱ, and the consonant alone gives the sixth form ስ, so s e l a m gives ሰላም; the soft q and k (ቐ, ኸ) and the throat letters have their own key combinations. Keyman, free from SIL, offers Ethiopic keyboards for Tigrinya on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone, and Power Geez and GeezIME are long-standing Windows tools. Phone keyboards such as Gboard also list Tigrinya.

Copying from this page works everywhere: tap a letter, then paste. The Ethiopic characters here are Unicode text from the Ethiopic block (U+1200 to U+137F), so you can copy and paste them as text. Old Ethiopic fonts from before Unicode put fidel in place of Latin letters, and text typed in them turns into nonsense when the font changes, which is the usual cause of "Tigrinya font" trouble. Fonts that show fidel well include Nyala and Ebrima on Windows, Noto Sans Ethiopic and Abyssinica SIL. In HTML a letter can be written by its number, e.g. ቐ for ቐ.

Where Tigrinya is spoken

Tigrinya is a Semitic language, a close relative of Tigre and of Ge'ez and a more distant one of Amharic, Arabic and Hebrew. CLDR estimates about 11 million speakers. Around 7 million of them live in Ethiopia 🇪🇹, mostly in the Tigray region, where Tigrinya is the regional language and the city of Mekelle (መቐለ) is the capital. Around 4 million live in Eritrea 🇪🇷, where Tigrinya is the most widely spoken language, the language of Asmara (ኣስመራ), and a working language of the state alongside Arabic and English.

Large communities live abroad as well, in Europe, North America, Israel and the Gulf states. Speakers in Eritrea and in Tigray read the same alphabet, with small differences in spelling and vocabulary. Tigrinya prices are written with the Eritrean nakfa (Nfk) or the Ethiopian birr (ብር, Br); neither currency has a sign of its own in Unicode. For the flags and emoji of each country see the Eritrea and Ethiopia collections, and for the same script with Amharic letters and words, the Amharic collection.