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The first symbol of the Amharic alphabet is called HOY and it’s the first of three h in Feedel. The pronunciation is like the h of the word "home". You draw it just like the letter U and then you add variations.This letter is combined with the 7 different vowels of the Amharic to form 7 syllables and 7 different characters. When clicking in the handwritten symbols, you can see how they are written and pronounced. I made the animations according to the instructions of the book Writing and Reading Amharic that I recommended in a previous post.

The pronunciation of the vowels is sometimes difficult to compare to a sound in English, many sounds don’t have an equivalent in the English language and sometimes the pronunciation changes depending of the consonants surrounding the vowel.  The only way to know for sure is listening to the sound of each syllable separate and then the different combinations in words. I adopted the phonetic notation of David Appleyard

print	phonetics	how to write it and say it	examples
	ha as in hat, half		(hahu) alphabet - abc
	hu as in hook		(hullu) all
	hi as in heat		(hisab) bill, check, account
	ha (same as the first one)		(haya) twenty
	he as in help		(hedä) go, depart, leave
	hï (ï vowel as the y in pretty)		(hïnädï) India
	ho as in home		(honä) be

The first and fourth syllables in this case are pronounced the same.

All the sequence in alphabetical order:

Note: The sounds of the Amharic Alphabet are from the Amharic Online website.

Finally for those who would like to test their knowledge of this first letter, I prepared a Quiz:

(It takes a while to load the sounds)

Next week, the letter L.

AliciA