Ethiopic Syllable Vo

On the GFF phonetic Amharic layout, type v, then o. Its guide maps that sequence to ቮ and is dated 2025-07-26.

What sound does ቮ represent?

It spells a syllable with v followed by o inside a word. The v-series is a set of related signs for syllables beginning with a v sound. In Amharic, it is mainly used for loanwords and foreign names, as of 2026. Read this sign with the surrounding word; it contributes a spoken sound to it.

Where does the v-series come from?

Catholic missionaries probably introduced the v-series to Amharic. They used it in the 17th century while transcribing Portuguese.

Ethiopic writing was adapted from South Arabian writing, used in ancient southern Arabia, for Geʿez, an early language of the region, around the end of the first millennium BCE. By the 4th century, it was developing into a left-to-right system in which a consonant sign also marks its following vowel. Early evidence survives in inscriptions, including royal texts from the ancient kingdom of Aksum and the Anza inscription.