Amharic / Geʽez Graphemic Module (LGM v1.0)

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Geʽez script (ግዕዝ)

Script Basics

• 33 base consonants (fidels)
• Each has 7 vowel forms (series), giving 231 distinct graphemes.
• Vowels are inherent — the “first form” has the vowel /ä/ (like schwa), others use diacritics or modifications.
• Written left-to-right.

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Series Structure (Example with ሀ-series)

For each base consonant, the 7 orders are:

Order	Vowel	Example (ሀ-series)	Latin Chain	Phoneme (IPA)	Notes
1	ä	ሀ	h + ä	/hä/	inherent vowel
2	u	ሁ	h + u	/hu/
3	i	ሂ	h + i	/hi/
4	a	ሃ	h + a	/ha/
5	e	ሄ	h + e	/he/
6	ə	ህ	h + ə	/hɨ/	“reduced” vowel
7	o	ሆ	h + o	/ho/

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Full Base Consonant List (first few as example)

We’ll map each to its 7 forms.

1. ሀ-series → h
2. ለ-series → l
3. መ-series → m
4. ሠ-series → ś (palatal s)
5. ረ-series → r
6. ሰ-series → s
7. ሸ-series → sh
8. ቀ-series → q (uvular)
9. በ-series → b
10. ቨ-series → v
    … (continues through all 33 base consonants)

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Literal–Graphemic Encoding for Lattice

We represent each grapheme as:

glyph: "ሄ"
base_consonant: "h"
vowel: "e"
latin_chain: ["h", "e"]
phoneme: "he"
series_order: 5

This lets the system:

• Recognize the consonant root
• Apply the vowel order
• Maintain phonetic consistency

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Why Amharic/Geʽez is Important in the Lattice

• Adds a non-Latin African script that’s structurally different from Hausa/Zulu/Swahili.
• Shows how abugidas can be integrated by decomposing into base consonant + vowel flag, same logic as Baybayin or Devanagari.
• Enables bidirectional transliteration — Geʽez ↔ Latin — without loss.

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