Ethiopic Syllable Nyaa

In Amharic, ኛ marks an ordinal: a place in order. After a number, 1ኛ gives first place; inside words, it is grammatical material. Tigrinya uses ይ for ordinals. Amharic print often raises ኛ, but also uses baseline placement.

Old South Arabian script, attested from the eighth century BCE, was adapted for Ge’ez, an older Ethiopian language, around the end of the first millennium BCE. Ethiopic inscriptions appear in the second or third century CE. From the fourth century CE, Ge’ez writing shifted to left-to-right syllables pairing consonants and vowels. The script later served Amharic and Tigrinya; Ge’ez remains in church use as of 2026.