Wiktionary:About Amharic

Main category: Amharic language

This page deals with the specific issues of Amharic entries on Wiktionary.

Phonology

The glottal stop, written as a character of either the series አ (ʼÄlf) or ዐ (ʽÄyn) should be:

• Transcribed as /(ʔ)/ in initial position or when between two different vowels

  አረሰ (ʾarräsä) /ˈ(ʔ)arːəsə/

  ሰዓት (säʿat) /ˈsə(ʔ)at/

• Transcribed as a simple /ʔ/ when occuring between two identical vowels

  ብዕር (bəʿər) /ˈbɨʔɨɾ/

Phonetic pronunciations should be provided with a label depicting the speaker's place of origin (for example, Addis Ababa).

Punctuation

Affixes should be given with a combining hyphen (-). For suffixes starting with a vowel, the appropriate character of the ʼÄlf-series should be used:

-ኢያ (-iya) (using the vowel ኢ i)

Words should be separated by a word separator (፡) rather than a blank space, both in entry names as in usage notes:

ቤተ፡ክርስቲያን (betä krəstiyan), rather than *ቤተ ክርስቲያን (*betä krəstiyan)

Full stops should be given using the Ethiopic full stop (።).

Stress is penultimate for verbs and antepenultimate for all other parts of speech.

Roots

Roots should be given using the -ä series characters separated by hyphens (-):

• ሐ-መ-መ (ḥä-mä-mä) (rather than *ሕ-ም-ም (*ḥə-mə-mə))

In the etymology section, if present, or at the start of an entry, {{am root}} should be given when a term is traceable to a root.