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Mela is a free online Amharic keyboard. Type Latin letters and they turn into the Ethiopic script (ፊደል / Fidel) as you type: selam becomes ሰላም, buna becomes ቡና. There is nothing to install. It works in any browser on a Windows PC, Mac, Chromebook, tablet or phone, and the text it produces is standard Unicode you can paste anywhere.
Unlike other online Amharic keyboards, Mela types like a modern phone keyboard. As you write, likely Amharic words appear above the text box; tap one to complete the word. Turn on auto-insert and the top suggestion is applied automatically when you finish a word, which is autocorrect for Amharic. The suggestions come from the same Amharic vocabulary that powers the Mela Android keyboard, including inflected verb forms that generic spell checkers miss.
Mela uses phonetic typing: write each letter by its sound, and it becomes Fidel. h then a gives ሃ, and s e l a m gives ሰላም. Capital letters give the emphatic consonants: T for ጠ, C for ጨ, S for ጸ. The letter grid above is the full mapping. The first column of each row shows the Latin key, and the columns run through the seven vowel orders (e, u, i, a, ee, silent, o). You can also click any letter on the grid to insert it, including Amharic punctuation (ሥርዓተ ነጥብ) and Geez numerals (ቁጥሮች).
The three buttons above the text box control the smart features. ጥቆማ turns word suggestions on and off. ራስሰር አስገባ is autocorrect: when it is on, the top suggestion is inserted automatically when you type a space or punctuation, and backspace undoes it. ABC switches to plain English typing and back. On phones, a small preview bubble above the cursor shows your word converting as you type (d, then ድ, then ደስታ), so you always see what you are getting.
When you're done, copy your text with one click and paste it into Word, Google Docs, email or social media. Need to share with non-Amharic readers? Hit the Translate button to open Google Translate with your text already filled in.
Capital letters give the emphatic consonants: T gives ጠ, C gives ጨ, S gives ጸ, P gives ጰ. The apostrophe (') gives አ and the backtick (`) gives ዐ. The letter grid above is the full reference: the first column of each row shows the Latin key.
Press the ራስሰር አስገባ button above the text box. The top suggestion then replaces your word as soon as you type a space or punctuation, the way a phone keyboard autocorrects. Press backspace right after a correction to get your original word back.
Open this page in any browser and start typing; there is nothing to install. See the guides for Windows PCs and Macs, then copy the text into Word, Google Docs, email or wherever it needs to go.
Yes. The online keyboard is free, and so is the Mela Android keyboard on Google Play.
Yes. On Android, open melakeyboard.com in Chrome and choose Install app (or Add to Home screen) from the menu. On iPhone, open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. Mela opens fullscreen like an app, and typing works even offline; suggestions need a connection.
Your document stays in your browser; only the word you are currently typing is sent to look up suggestions. The full text is never uploaded.
The Ethiopic script, called ፊደል (Fidel) in Amharic, is one of the oldest writing systems still in active use anywhere in Africa, and one of only a handful of indigenous African scripts. The earliest Semitic inscriptions associated with it, found in what is today Eritrea, date to around the 9th century BCE. The script grew out of the Ancient South Arabian script, and scholars still debate whether it took its distinctive form on the African side of the Red Sea, in what is now Eritrea or northern Ethiopia, or in Yemen. Whichever side of that debate one favors, the Ge'ez script as we use it today matured on African soil. Its oldest known inscription in this Ethiopian form, the Hawulti obelisk, still stands in Matara, Eritrea.
During the first centuries CE, an "Old Ethiopic" stage emerged that wrote Ge'ez (ግዕዝ) as an abjad of 26 consonant letters, written from right to left, with no vowels marked. The pivotal change came in the 4th century CE, during the reign of King Ezana of Aksum, when the script was vocalized: small marks attached to each consonant began to indicate one of seven vowels, turning the alphabet into the abugida (alphasyllabary) it remains today. The first completely vocalized inscriptions are royal inscriptions of Ezana himself, though vocalized letters appeared a few years before him.
An abugida sits between an alphabet and a syllabary: each Fidel character represents a consonant fused with a specific vowel. The script is organized into seven orders, called ግዕዝ, ካዕብ, ሣልስ, ራብዕ, ኃምስ, ሳድስ and ሳብዕ, one for each vowel, so a single base consonant such as ሀ produces seven syllabograms (ሀ ሁ ሂ ሃ ሄ ህ ሆ). With roughly 33 base consonants in common Amharic use, plus labiovelar forms and additional characters for particular languages, the full Fidel comes to more than 230 commonly used letters. The script also has its own punctuation, including the word separator ፡ (hulet neteb) and the sentence ending ። (arat neteb), as well as its own numerals (፩ ፪ ፫ … ፲ ፻ ፼), which follow an additive base ten system distinct from Arabic numerals.
Today the Ge'ez script writes a range of Afroasiatic and Nilo Saharan languages spoken across the Horn of Africa, including Amharic (አማርኛ), Tigrinya (ትግርኛ), Tigre, Bilen and several Gurage languages, along with others. Ge'ez itself, the classical language for which the script is named, is no longer anyone's first language but remains the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The full script is encoded in Unicode across four blocks: Ethiopic (U+1200 to U+137F), Ethiopic Supplement (U+1380 to U+139F), Ethiopic Extended (U+2D80 to U+2DDF) and Ethiopic Extended A (U+AB00 to U+AB2F). Anything you type with Mela is therefore standard, portable Unicode text that any device with an Ethiopic font can render correctly.
Guides: Type Amharic on a PC · Type Amharic on a Mac · Get the Android keyboard