This is a version of an original posting made at EthioSciences and
soc.culture.african on April 13th, 1994.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you Mr. Apola for your question regaurding the difference
between Ge'ez script and Ethiopic.  There are distinct differences
between the two scripts (both terms are used loosely with regularity
to refer to one another) and I would like to explore the differences
in reply to you by way of a tour of the rich history of Ethiopic
script.  This is the best that I have been able to learn it, I hope
others will add and make corrections to what I am able to offer below.

Ge'ez is the official language of the Ethiopian church and has been
since its foundation.  The Ge'ez script and language both predate the
church, the script has evolved through many forms and flourished over
the centuries while the language perished (dialects of Ge'ez grew to 
become Tigrinia and Tigre) only to remain spoken amongst present day 
trained preists.

The origins of Ge'ez script is well known, it is the Mino-Sabaean,
or Sabaean for short. From Jensen (1) :

"    At about the beginning of our era (0 AD implied) South-Arabian Semites
migrated from Habashat on the Arabian coast across to Africa and founded a
kingdom there with its capital at Axum.  This Axumite or Abyssinian kingdom
reached its highest point in the fourth century, while at the same time it
became Christianized and accessible to the Greek spirit.  The immigrant
Semites called themselves "Ge'ez", i.e. the "imigrants".  During the first
centuries they used the Sabaean script for the representation of their
language, the so-called Ge'ez language; it was replaced, however, in about 350
by another form, the Old Abyssinian script.  This script in its later form,
transmitted in manuscripts and usually described as the Ethiopic or Ge'ez 
script."

As Dawkins (2) observed Ethiopic script has its roots in beauty as well :

"     The Sabaean offshoot from the main branch of the South-Semitic
alphabet, a graceful, very elegant script consisting of twenty-nine
letters, spread into Africa.  There it became the progenitor of the
Ethiopic alphabet, and this in turn gave birth to the modern Amharic, 
Tigre, Tigrinya and other alphabets of modern Ethiopia.  These are the 
only South-Semitic alphabetic scripts still in use today."


The Old Abyssinian script must have come into being when spoken Ge'ez 
had mutated to the point that the imported Sabaean script could no longer
provide the same facility to the Ge'ez (now Axumite) people.  A major over
haul was given to the script then.  There were 5 characters dropped, and
later 2 new ones added (P and p) bringing the Ge'ez alphabet upto its well
known 26 characters.  Other small modifications were also made to the
characters.  A second departure was from the writing practices of the original
Ge'ez scribes:  writing would now be left to right instead of the traditional
Semitic practice of right to left (the earliest form of the old Abyssinian 
script was read in "plow style" -right to left, then left to right and back).
The change in the direction of writing did not effect the form of the
characters save for "r" which would now be drawn in its mirror image.  A 3rd
very important and interesting thing occured at this same time.

Again from Jensen :


"    Old Abyssinian inscriptions exhibit no kind of vowel indication until
about A.D. 350.  But along side these, vocalized inscriptions are also
found and in the book script writing with vocalized consonant-signs had
come to prevail completely.  Through this, the Ethiopic script has a great
superiority in clarity over the other kinds of Semitic script, written
purely with consonants, and it can be said without hesitation to be the most
complete of all varieties of Semitic script."

	At this point Old Abyssinian script was no longer an "alphabet" but
now a "syllabary".  The full 26x7 Fidel (Version 1 Release 1) is 
what is almost always refered to as "Ge'ez script".  This is also the point
I will state where the term Ge'ez should stop and Ethiopic begins.  It is
important to note a 2nd distinction between Ge'ez and Ethiopic fidel; not
only do the number of letters in the fidels differ, but so do the SOUNDS
of the characters that are common to both sets.  Referring to the fidel given
in one of my previous postings, characters that have different sounds (were
lost) from the modern day are :  s2, h3, and S2.  The phonetic symbology
representing the sounds of these characters I could not duplicate for you
readily in 7 bit ascii.  The sounds are still used in modern day Arabic and
I can offer a list of corresponding arabic characters if requested.

	When characters are added to the basic 26x7 Ge'ez fidel, the
appended character set should then be referred to as "Ethiopic".
When other languages adopted the Ge'ez fidel as thier written script
it became necessary to add new characters to the fidel to represent
spoken sounds that did not occur in spoken Ge'ez.  The next fidel
to come about is the 33x7 tradditional version that you will find 
most readily in childrens' school books. 

Quoting loosely from Marcel Cohen (3) :


"     There were seven sounds of old amharic that did not have ge'ez 
letters to represent them.  A standard was developed by amhara scribes
to represent one of these sounds by drawing 2 dots above the ge'ez
letter having the sound most similar.  These two dots were usually
connected with a thin line, and so the modification then resembled a
hat  ._.  When the amharic fidel was established these additional
letters would   follow the originals that they were modifications of.
These 7 letters are :  x, c, N, K, Z, j, and C.  "Z" and "C" are
exceptions to the "hat" rule that identifies the additions made to the
original ge'ez fidel."

Yes, I realize "K" is now more of a tigrinia phoneme than amharic, and that
the same ._. was added to "q" to create "Q".  I do not know who did what
first so     please do not flame me on this.  Educate if you can.  If you
believe amharic is a man made language created by Zagwe emperors for secret
code, then the amharic letters would have been added to the fidel somewhere
in the interval 1095 - 1365 AD (March '94 Ethiopian Review).  Historians
observe the amharic characters appearing "...in about the middle of the
fourteenth century" (1). 

The same ._. was later added to "b" to create "v" (mostly for foreign
words though "vo" is common in Chaha) and Wolf Leslau (4) proposed the
same modification for representing 4 sounds in Chaha and other Gurage
languages (the characters may predate Leslau's use).  There are also the
diqala or "bastard" 8th form characters added to 18 characters in the
modern Ethiopic fidel plus 24 (more by Leslau's count) others added for
the diqala forms 9 - 12. 

An implosive "d" is another modern addition. In the 17th century the fidel
changed fashion when scribes began to draw characters with a more rounded
and decorative look -as we know it today (it had been more angular in the
13th - 15th centuries) (1).  Otherwise the Ethiopic script has changed
very little since the syllabarification.

It is important to keep in mind that a person capable of reading in Ethiopic
would not be able to read correctly in Ge'ez for the sound differences; a
modern priest (or other) trained to read Ge'ez script could not read the Old
Ge'ez (right to left alphabetic) script, and a person capable of reading Old
Ge'ez may not be capable of reading texts in Mino-Sabaean.  Two persons, one
knowing only Latin the other Ethiopic script, will find familiar shapes in the
Sabaean but the script will appear equally alien to both viewers.  

Finally, the term "Ethiopic" may also refer to 20 numbers and (as many as)
10 punctuation marks in addition to the characters.  Throughout the ages
Ethiopic script has adapted to the needs of its users and is still changing.
A few years ago there was a movement amoung scholars at AAU to expand the
fidel further to include all of the sounds of all languages of Ethiopia.
The end of the war is a likely cause for the interuption of the project.
Should the project restart we will see our beloved fidel grow yet again. 


	yours,

     	danEl

Additional :


The Origin of the Mino-Sabaean Script.
	
	The South Semitic scripts were unknown until the 1830s and have a
clouded geaneology at best.  Several ancestries are likely;  South Semitic
came from the North Semitic, the North Semitic came from the South Semitic,
both came from the Early Canaanite, or they both have different anscestors
(the NS Canaanite, the SS Palaeo/Sinaitic) and influenced each others
development.  Diringer leaves this as an open question, Jensen favours the
Sanai origin.

Who Influenced the Decision to go Syllabic?

	The syllabic nature of the Ethiopic script is a highly confounding
oddity in the region.  There is only one other place in the world where
this type of script is found :

"     Friedrich rightly points out that `the principle, not at all self-
evident, of making consonants with inherent ~a into the normal form, and of
expressly denoting absence of vowel in a consonant, is found only in the
Indian script and nowhere else; above all, it is completely alien to the
other Semitic alphabets.'  Littmann, too, is of the opinion that the
principle of the vowel-indication was imparted to the Christian missionaries
of Abyssinia (Frumentius and Theophilos, c. A.D. 300) by Indian missionaries,
and recalls that at the time of the Roman Empire extremely brisk trade existed
between the Mediterranean and India across Ethiopia.  A fresh creation
after a foreign (in fact Indian) model may come closer to the truth than
the assumption of a completely new creation on such a peculiar principle,
as Grohmann for instance suggests."(1)

The Amhara "sh" :

	Why was the Amharic character following "s" ("x", sounds like "sh")
added to the fidel?  The Ge'ez (26x7) fidel already had a character for
for this same sound it is "s2" (see fidel posted previously).  Though
the sound was lost in the characters use in Tigrinia and Amharic, it should
have still been known to priests and scholars of mid 14th century.

Alternate Histories of the Script.

	At various stages during the development of the script one may hear
a different accounting of events in folk lores and mythology that try to
tie together a directed development, by the church and kings, of the script
and languages as part of a grand scheme.  Fighting between Muslim and 
Christian leaders, even infighting within the church can be traced back
to a spark from the implication of a script issue.  These tales that bring
in elements of the supernatural will have different endings depending on 
who is doing the telling. You are unlikely to find historical evidence to
support these tales but they are held fast to by true believers.  A German
graduate student is even said to have been slain by loyalist church workers
(Sekota, 1978?) for getting too close to the Fidel's secrets.



References Sited


1.  Jensen, Hans, Sign, Symbol, and Script; An Account of Man's Efforts to
    Write. New York, NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969.
 
2.  Diringer, David, Writing, New York, NY, Frederick A. Praeger Inc., 1962.

3.  Cohen, Marcel, Traite de langue Amharique, Paris, 1936.

4.  Leslau, Wolf. Ethiopians speak; studies in cultural background. Vol 2,
    Berkeley, University of California Press, 1965.

5.  Coulmas, Florian, The Writing Systems of The World, New York, NY, 
    B. Blackwell, 1989.         
