Ethiopic Syllable Glottal U

Choose ኡ from the vowel forms in its Ethiopic character family.

Ethiopic writing gives consonant-and-vowel syllables their own characters, so use the dedicated ኩ for ku, not ከ + ኡ. Input methods arrange character-family forms differently; some use a multi-level key, popover, or swipe. A font may draw ኡ with a different outline without changing the character.

What does ኡ mean?

It marks a u vowel; the word supplies the meaning.

This character belongs to the Ethiopic writing system, which evolved from South Arabian consonant writing. The earliest writing evidence for the broader tradition in Ethiopia and Eritrea is pseudo-Sabaean, an early South Arabian-style consonant script, from the 8th/7th centuries BC. An Ethiopic consonant script used for Ge’ez, an ancient language, appears in the 1st–3rd centuries AD. In the 4th century, it develops into an abugida, a writing system where consonant letters also encode a vowel. Its documented predecessor is the South Arabian abjad, a script that writes consonants.

Ge’ez remains a liturgical language. As of 2026, the Ethiopic script also serves Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, and Oromo. In Tigrinya, a Latin-letter transliteration may write the reading as u or ’u; the apostrophe marks a brief catch in the throat before the vowel. Modern Amharic speech may drop that onset.