Tablet Keyboard Layout

Quickstart

This keyboard is designed to work intuitively with a standard (QWERTY) keyboard. This means that the Harari sounds in this keyboard can be found by thinking of the most similar English letters. For example, you can type selam to get ሰላም.

As you can see, each Harari character is typed with the base consonant first and then the vowel. For example, ጤ is typed T then ie.

Examples

Keyboard Details

The Harari keyboard uses an intuitive phonetic system where the Harari sounds are matched to the nearest English letters. You can think of how a word sounds in Harari and then type it out with English.

Example: typing selam produces ሰላም

Because Harari has more sounds than English, we sometimes have to adjust this rule. For example, English does not have ጠ and the closest similar letter would be t. In this case you should type T, for capital T:

Example: typing TienaysTlN produces ጤናይስጥልኝ

Notice that we used capital N also for ኝ and we needed both ie together to make the 5th ጠ letter, ጤ. When the letter you want to type does not appear when you hit the similar sounding key in English, try using the capital next. If typing the capital does not work, then try hitting the key two times:

Example: typing sselam produces ሠላም

Example: typing SSeHey produces ፀሐይ

Next, when you need to type the extra letters of Harari like ሏ,ሟ,ኳ you can do so by typing an extra vowel after a u:

Example: typing lua produces ሏ

Example: typing mua produces ሟ

Finally, we must introduce a special rule for ' (apostrophe). Some words are spelt with a ሳድስ (6^th) letter followed by a vowel, like ርኤ in ገብርኤል. We use the apostrophe here to type gebr'iel to make sure we get ርኤ instead of ሬ.

Example: typing mel'ak produces መልአክ

Example: typing m'eeraf produces ምዕራፍ

Type Apostrophe twice after a 6^th order letter to make it appear in your document:

Example: typing mel''ak produces መል'አክ

We also use the “number sign” (“#” also know as the “hash mark”) for Ethiopic numbers, so #1 becomes ፩ and so on. If a # is needed in your document before a number, type it twice and: ##1 becomes #1. The double strike works for other punctuation as well, so typing ; once makes ፤ and a second time gives English semicolon ;.

See Typing in Harari (English) for full details on how to type all Harari letters, numbers and punctuation.