Ethiopic Syllable Sza

It is a letter used to write Ethiopic words. It is called sawt. In Ge'ez, a language written with this script, its basic form represents a syllable transcribed śä in Latin letters; added marks change its vowel to make other forms.

The shape of ሠ has a documented graphic ancestor in Ancient South Arabian 𐩦. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, inscriptions in a South Arabian-inspired style called pseudo-Sabaean date to the 8th/7th centuries BC. Evidence for Proto-Ge'ez at the sites of Yeha and Matara is placed around the fourth to fifth century BCE. A clearly defined Ethiopic script appears in inscriptions from the second/third centuries CE.

By the fourth century, vowel marks had transformed the consonant script into an abugida, a system where each base sign combines a consonant with a vowel. One historical account links this change to the need to write a growing body of Ge'ez literature, especially sacred texts, more efficiently. In classical Ge'ez transliteration, ሠ is śä and ሰ is sä. Modern Amharic pronounces them alike but keeps both spellings.

How do I type ሠ?

On Keyman GFF 3.1.2, type sse for ሠ. The same Amharic keyboard manual maps its other vowel orders to ssu, ssi, ssa, ssie, ss, and sso. Other Ethiopic keyboards may use different mappings.