An experiment: a "latin" alphabet modelled on the ethiopian Ge'ez script.
Amhara was created by transferring the typical Amharic forms to the west European alphabet. Nearly all of the formal characteristics of Ge’ez could be carried over into the lower case letters.
Typical for the Ethiopian script are the specially emphasized expanded verticals resulting from the horizontal position of the pen. The form which appears most frequently and thus influences the overall picture the most is the open bow at the bottom. The symmetrical bowl at the transition of the expanded to the light and again expanded determines the appearance of the font considerably. Also typical of Semitic scripts are the many forms of commas, serifs, rings and all kinds of additional “accessories.” With these so-called diacritic marks, the desired vowel sounds are added to the 28 basic consonant characters and consequently, 276 different syllable characters are attained. In this way there is a wealth of forms in the details which makes it possible to put together the components for European characters.
At the same time, some forms hardly ever appear in Ge’ez: the individual straight stroke (as in I) and the diagonal stroke from the top right to the bottom left (only appears in »Z«). All Amharic characters have at least a hint of a stroke from the top left and a small downstroke at the bottom towards the right. To a great extent the attempt was made to retain this direction of movement in Amhara.
The lower case characters have a restless appearance (very intentional) and are not fluently legible. In this way the foreign and exotic impression of the African model is still present.
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The files offered here to download contain only a reduced font. That means, the font only consists of uppercase and lowercase from A to Z or rather, a to z.
The complete font including numerals, umlauts, punctuation and especially ligatures is only available with your order and your cash.