Talk:Geʽez script

message: I don't know if there is a standard transliteration. I realize that ሰ is Amharic [s], that's not the point. ሰ is descended from Proto-Semitic ś, and I believe it is transliterated as ś for this reason, but I have to check the literature; the exact pronunciation of 4th century Ge'ez is unknown anyway. If you don't want to transcribe ሠ as s, at least use  š to avoid confusion with ś
regarding the listing of Phoenician letters, I would suggest only those theorized to be descended from the same Proto-Sinaitic glyphs. These are only a third or so of the 22 listed. dab (ᛏ) 11:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are rough similarities to most of the Phoenician letters, I think we should list them all, just to not leave any out.  Which ones do you feel are specifically descended from which different P-S glyphs? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

text: If you haven't already seen it, see the related chart I put at the bottom of :am:ቅድመ-ሴማዊ ጽሕፈት.  --ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I hadn't; very nice; could you upload your Proto-Sinaitic glyphs ( etc.) to commons? dab (ᛏ) 16:02, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, I got them from commons, so it should appear above now if I just remove the : from before Image, let me try it... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice; however, the title is misleading. There is no such thing as "Proto-Semitic" glyphs. I believe these images are reconscructions of a Proto-Canaanite alphabet (but by whom), and are thus not intended to represent predecessors of the South Arabian script. We should use the images on Proto-Canaanite, and be very clear about the images we use here. 130.60.142.65 11:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I may be wrong. I believe the images originate with :de:Protosemitisches Alphabet, and compare . But I do think these articles are confusing Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite (but the confusion may be mine, also), and in any case they cite no literature, so they are really worthless for deciding the case. 130.60.142.65 12:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Transliteration

message: I'm not certain of the relationships of  ቐ, ኸ, ዸ, and ጘ with ቀ, ከ, ደ, and ገ, but maybe I can help a little? ኸ is indeed a variant of ከ, occuring sometimes in Tigrinya when the root has ከ, but the specific form changes it to a ኸ. It also appears sometimes when you would expect ከ, like the ending -kum becomes -xum (semitic direct object for you pl.), spelled with ኸ. It is pronounced x, like H in Hannukah (also transliterated as Ch, or Kh for mainly arabic words). The same is the case with ቐ and ቀ. ቐ sounds very weird indeed, sort of like a mix of "ayin" and a ሐ (ħ - see Heth (letter)). I couldn't tell you whether or not these are "uvular approximants," though. ዸ and ጘ are a mystery to me, though. I've never seen them in my life, but they do seem to be variants of ደ and ገ.
Yom 19:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Yom that ጘ is a mystery. Is it actually used in any language, or just something that a font designer created? As for ዸ, when Oromo was written with the syllabary, I believe I saw this form occasionally used for the implosive d. Pete unseth (talk) 17:54, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  ቐ, ኸ, ዸ, and ጘ 

message: don't be a pest about the comparative table, CS, or we will have to drop all comparison with Canaanite glyphs. You do not seem to object to the glyphs I marked as cognate, but you seem to think that others are cognate as well. It is then your responsibility to provide sources. Do either that, or remove the whole Canaanite comparison, including the obvious cases. Just listing cognate and undelated glyphs lumped together will not do. Sources concerning the comparison of SA and Canaanite alphabets are over at Middle Bronze Age alphabets, but I haven't looked at them in depth yet. dab (ᛏ) 17:28, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: the table

message: Here are all the letters you removed:
20px, 
These are probably "cognates" because they both are thought to be descended from the same hieroglyph,  R11 
----
20px, 
It may not be as obvious, but both are thought to descend from the same hieroglyph,  A28 
----
20px, 
Again, not as obvious, until you see that both are traced to the ancestor  N24 
----
 - (the comparable Sabaean glyph looks like a primitive Pi, not like an M except in a very rare variant...)
Both forms clearly come from  O1 
----
20px, 
Both are though to have the same ancestor,  F1 
----
20px, 
Certainly cognates, both having a common ancestor,  and  D46 
----
20px, 
Not apparent, until you see the common ancestor,  (I would also venture to say this is from the hieroglyph  T3  but I'll admit I don't have an actual source for that one...)
----
20px, 
I admit this one is a little iffy source-wise, because the corresponding glyph isn't attested in Proto-Sinaitic and may not have been used at that stage, but I would submit that they could easily be related through the hieroglyph  O49 
----
20px, 
At least one of these is thought to come from  M22 , and could well be that both do.
----
20px, 
Both are thought to have the same hieroglyph ancestor,  D21 .
Additionally, the names for many of the actual letters themselves are clearly cognate in both North and SOuth Semitic.
ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 18:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  They are all "cognates" IMO 

message: I tried droping in some numbers like ፭፻ and it looks like squares. It works here but not in the main system, but when you select the objects you see the numbers, is this a flaw with Wikipedia? I found the solution if you put a western charecter inbetween the numbers and the ge'ez.(፭፻-ዓመታት በጓላ) like that. --Halaqah 23:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Numbers Dont work

message: I'm seeing about 100 links to this empty Korean article on the left, in the "In other languages" box. How do we fix that? Josephgrossberg 03:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see what you mean. I can't see a Korean inter-wiki link in the list - so perhaps it's been created in a different way? There also seems to be a problem with the interpretation of the tables - has there been a change in the syntax that should be used? Any experts to help, please? Gailtb 08:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Something's wrong with the  template. The same links occur in List of Islamic terms in Arabic, and other articles that use this template. Apparently it was due to a bot adding that Korean article to the template as a Korean equivalent. I've reverted the bot's edits and it works fine now. Someone will have to delete the article over at the Korean Wikipedia to prevent the bot from adding it again, though. Does anyone know any contributors over there? — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 19:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean Wiki Links in Sidebar 

message: Why can't I find the total number of symbols in this syllabary? That's a normal bit of information that should be contained in this article. Badagnani 21:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of symbols 

message: IMHO is ዠ a palatalized variant, and not an affricated variant, of ዘ. --88.77.242.123 (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modifications for other languages: Additional letters 

message: I think this sentence needs re-work... But maybe it's just me
The film 500 Years Later (፭፻-ዓመታት በኋላ) was the first mainstream Western documentary to use Ge'ez characters for the film title 500 Years Later. 
192.114.175.2 05:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  messy sentence? 

message: Anyone? This has now entered English. Where should the stress be? kwami (talk) 16:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Stress in Amharic and other Ethiopian Semitic languages that use the Ge'ez alphabet, does not fall on one of the vowels as in English, but rather on certain consonants.  No attention is paid to stress on vowels, so you may stress whichever syllable you like.  In the word abugida, there are no stressed consonants.  Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 17:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, stress falls on syllables, not consonants or vowels. Are you saying that all vowels in abugida are pronounced with equal stress? Or that stress varies depending on how the word is used? If the latter, where does it fall when the word is said in citation? kwami (talk) 19:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, in Amharic, stress falls on certain consonants, not on syllables - as I said.  (Read linguist Amsalu Aklilu if you don't believe me.) And what I am saying is that it does not matter which syllable you stress, if any. It will be interpreted the same, regardless. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:04, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So you're saying that Amharic has no stress. (Sorry, but if you think consonants have stress, we don't mean the same thing by "stress".) kwami (talk) 09:44, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  pronunciation of ''abugida'' 

message: This article is in a total mess. Ge'ez is an abugida but the article mentions that it's a syllabary and even the title of the article mentions that it's an alphabet. Now I'm confused. kotakkasut 01:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standardisation needed 

message: My question is in the title: haven’t ቝ and ቚ been interchanged in this article?
Tohuvabohuo (talk) 05:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  ቝ and ቚ interchanged? 

message: I have updated this article to use the ‘correct’ character for representing the glottal stop, ie the ʻOkina, within the body of the text. I confirmed this is the correct character by consulting Bright’s ‘The World’s Writing Systems’ (p. 98). However, it occurs to me that ideally this should be also reflected in the title of the article as well (as with the ʻOkina example). Of course this is a typographic quibble, but IMO it is an important one. pablohoney (talk) 22:07, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the okina is not correct. The okina is not used for languages other than Hawaiian and other Austronesian languages. The traditional symbol for the glottal stop in Semitic languages is a semicircle ʾ (Unicode "Modifier Leter Right Half Ring", 02BE), and for the voiced pharyngeal a semicircle in the other direction ʿ (Modifier Letter Left Half Ring, 02BF). That's what you're seeing in The World's Writing Systems. (These are tiny in the Wikipedia font, but larger in most fonts.) The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are ʔ and ʕ respectively. Linguistatlunch (talk) 18:33, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proper Latin script typography of name ‘Geʻez’ 

message: These are terrible sources. Ifrah has the tendency of claiming certainty too quickly. When there's still doubt about something, or when things are clouded in the mists of time, he tends to pick something he likes and proclaim that as fact.
Teresi is even worse. When he writes he always has a heavy agenda, and he frequently puts words in people's mouths, leaves out things that might contradict his preferred narrative, cherry-picks, presents unreliable sources as more reliable than they are, and so on. He always picks a narrative first, and then rakes material together, instead of first doing research and then deciding on a narrative.
For these reasons, these two writers aren't reliable sources. You simply cannot trust whether anything they've written is actually so. For that reason, I've removed material sourced from these two.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.114.146.117 (talk) 16:02, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  I deleted material sourced from Ifrah and Teresi 

message: The same set of symbols is used by a number of languages, but not always for the same sounds. Maybe we should decide if the IPA transcription given for each symbol are estimates as to the reconstructed sounds heard specifically in Ge'ez, a language that is no longer natively spoken. Some of the same characters will be pronounced quite differently in Amharic, Tigrinya, and Silt'e. Pete unseth (talk) 23:22, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, citing sources for that IPA would be good. --Akhenaten0 (talk) 15:21, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with trying to give IPA pronunciations for symbols 

message: Geez is alternatively called Etiopic and it is fully developed in Ethiopia. This piece has lots of errors
1) the mention of Eritrea. The Eritrean region has nothing to do with the development of the script. The script was fully developed by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Eritreans use it because they were part of Ethiopia. 
2) the Arabian connection: Geez might have evolved from an ancient Sabean script. However it is totally different now. It has added vowels and some other characters. There is no other country that uses Ge'ez other than Ethiopia and the Ethiopians living in their new country Eritrea  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ttimes93 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who wrote this crap? 

message: Does the Ge'ez script have its own quotation marks or do they use those used in various languages that use the Latin alphabet when required? -- sion8  talk page 06:10, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: if im not mistaken, at least in tig, we use just the " " . i speak a bit. DannyM999x (talk) 20:04, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotation marks in Ge'ez 

message: Would anyone be able to add Chaha to the great table on the "Letters_used_in_modern_alphabets" section? I know they made further adaptations to the Ge'ez script for its special sounds, but not sure which. Thanks! Illang (talk) 03:58, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding [[Chaha]] to "Letters used in modern alphabets"? 

message: I put in a general wiki link to vocalization, but of the various definitions of the term, I’m only almost sure L-vocalization is meant in the context of the usage here. It likely would be better if the author had put in a brief explanation, a sentence, as to what he means by the term.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sychonic (talk • contribs) 16:39, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vocalization definition  

message: ፍቅር 197.156.95.233 (talk) 18:47, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  የኔ ፍቅር 

message: The IPA transcription in the first sentence of the article, [ˈɡɨʕɨz], does not match the sound clip, which is more like [ˈɡɨːz], similar to [gɪːz]. They should match. If someone wants to add the reconstructed ancient pronunciation [ɡɨʕɨz] they may, but it shouldn't be alongside the sound clip and it should be explained. Linguistatlunch (talk) 18:42, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: came here to say exactly the same thing, the audio and the IPA do not match on this article. I do not know which one is correct, but they aren't the same, or even particularly similar.  The IPA given is [ɡɨʕɨz] (bisyllabic, broken by a fricative, and with a vowel unfamiliar to English speakers), and the audio clip is just something like [gɛz], that is to say, rhymes with English "fez" (for those who don't read IPA).  This complete inconsistency should be ironed out.  --Tomatoswoop (talk) 16:55, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of the name Ge'ez 

message: What is the evidence that they borrowed the numerals from Greek? 2A02:C7C:36FF:3600:553:C7E9:15D6:F4EE (talk) 10:48, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be thing that if both use a similar system then it is attributed to outside influence 2A02:C7C:36FF:3600:553:C7E9:15D6:F4EE (talk) 10:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numerals 

message: If the vocalisation occurred because of Indic scripts what was actually Ethiopian is seems like a deliberate attempt to suppress any type of autonomy 31.94.60.249 (talk) 18:27, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eurocentrism 

message: Scripts, or some of their features, are borrowed frequently. The traditional Mongol script has some remnants from Aramaic script. This Roman script is borrowed and adapted from the Middle East. This example of script borrowing is hardly Eurocentric! The Nüshu script in China borrowed from standard Chinese characters. The earlier Ancient South Arabian script used in Ethiopia did not mark vowels. After passengers with Indian connections were shipwrecked on the Eritrean coast, a system of vowels was adopted for Ge'ez script. An important similar feature for Indic scripts and the Ge'ez script is that the unmarked form of the first symbol in each row carries a basic vowel. Unrelated syllabaries use an overt indication of a vowel for each symbol. All of this has nothing to do with the 21st century concept of "autonomy". Pete unseth (talk) 20:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indic influence: how is that "Eurocentric"?