Desktop Keyboard Layout

Phone Keyboard Layout

Letters

When the GFF Amharic mobile keyboard starts, the key layout appears as shown in the following image. Note the relationship between the letters of the middle row and top row:

Tapping a key once, the modifier letters to the left (አ, ኡ, ኢ) and right (ኣ, ኤ, ኦ) of the spacebar. For example, tapping ግ the modifiers change to ገ, ጉ, ጊ, ጋ, ጌ, ጎ . If a modifier is tapped, ግ will be updated on screen.

As an alternative, if preferred, holding a key down for a few moments (called a “longpress”) a popup menu appears where you can tap the letter desired. The popup menu for ግ is shown below:

The modifier keys will also have popups as applicable. For example to enter the extended syllables for ጐ, ጒ, ጓ, ጔ and ጕ as shown:

Punctuation

When typing letters, the ! and ። keys are available for entering the most common punctuation without shifting to another “layer”. The following image shows the punctuation for a longpress of !:

The punctuation for a longpress of ።:

For additional punctuation and numerals, tap the 123 key to shift to the next layer:

Note that numerals on the punctuation layer use the long press feature to make Geʾez numerals available:

Tapping the @ shifts to a 2nd layer to access all remaining punctuation:

A tap of the ፩ key will go to the final layer where Geʾez numbers and some less used, and non-Amharic letters, can be accessed.

Numerals

The last layer to shift to presents the Geʾez numbers, all Geʾez punctuation, letters of related languages, and a few lesser used letters that did not fit conveniently on the initial letters layer.

Note the arrow button, ▶, at the end of the row of Geʾez numerals, tapping it will slide the numerals to the remaining numbers that are orders of ten (e.g. ፳, ፴, ፵, etc.):

After tapping the ▶ button, the Geʾez orders of ten appear as shown:

Tapping the ▶ button again slides to the western digits, a final tap will return to the initial Geʾez numerals.

Simply tap the ሀለሐ key to return to the starting letters layers.

Tablet Keyboard Layout

Quickstart

This keyboard is designed to work intuitively with a standard (QWERTY) keyboard. This means that the Amharic 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 Amharic character is typed with the base consonant first and then the vowel. For example, ጤ is typed T then ie.

Examples

Keyboard Details

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

Example: typing selam produces ሰላም

Because Amharic 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 Amharic like ሏ,ሟ,ኴ you can do so by typing an extra vowel after a u:

Example: typing mua produces ሟ

Example: typing guie produces ጔ

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

Related Keyboard Layouts

Keyboard Layouts for other Ethiopic languages:

Harege Fidelat (All Languages)
Mesobe Fidelat (All Languages)
Awngi
Bench
Blin
Dizi
Geʾez
Gurage
Meʾen
Mursi
Suri
Tigrigna (Eritrea)
Tigrigna (Ethiopia)

Other Internet Resources

Download the Amharic Keyboard for Keyman Desktop

More on the Amharic Writing System at Omniglot.com
More on the Amharic Language at Wikipedia.org

More on the Geʾez Script at Omniglot.com
More on the Geʾez Script at Wikipedia.org