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Writing system

The Amharic script is an abugida, and the graphemes of the Amharic writing system are called fidäl. It is derived from a modification of the Ge'ez script. Each character represents a consonant+vowel sequence, but the basic shape of each character is determined by the consonant, which is modified for the vowel. Some consonant phonemes are written by more than one series of characters: / ʔ /, / s /, / tsʼ /, and / h / (the last one has four distinct letter forms). This is because these fidäl originally represented distinct sounds, but phonological changes merged them. The citation form for each series is the consonant+ ä form, i.e. the first column of the fidäl. The Amharic script is included in Unicode, and glyphs are included in fonts available with major operating systems.