Fonts

The Ethiopic syllabary, also known as the Ge'ez alphabet, is used in East Africa for Amharic, Bilen, Tigre, Tigrinya, and other languages. The syllabary evolved from the script for classical Ge'ez, which is now a liturgical language.

The Ge'ez alphabet is not a standard font installation on most computers and must be added by the user. In order to view Ethiopic fonts, you only need a unicode Ethiopic font in your computer's font folder. In Windows systems, this folder is normally C:\Windows\Fonts. On Macintosh computers, you need to drag and drop the font into /Library/Fonts. Once the font is installed, you may need to restart your Web browser in order to make it recognize the newly installed fonts. For Debian-based Linux systems, enter sudo apt-get install ttf-sil-abyssinica in a terminal, then restart your browser.

Free Ethiopic fonts and keyboard downloads

Only a font is needed to view Ethiopic script. A keyboard driver is required only if you also wish to write text in the script.

Keyboard drivers

• Self installer for font, amharic keyboard, manual — Note this is only free for personal use.
• User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb — Web keyboard integrated into Wikipedia.

Washra (package of several fonts and a virtual keyboard)

• Home page — With install instructions.
• Download fonts only — On Windows, unzip the .ttf file to any folder on your disk, then right-click to install it, or move it to the special "C:\Windows\FontsFonts" folder using the Explorer (do not extract it there directly, or it won't be installed correctly).

GF Zemen

• Self installer for Windows 9x/Me/NT/2K/XP/Vista/7)
• Download font only — On Windows, save the .ttf file to any folder on your disk, then right-click to install it or move it to the special "C:\Windows\FontsFonts" folder using the Explorer (do not extract it there directly, or it won't be installed correctly).

WAZU JAPAN

• Gallery of Unicode Fonts for Ethiopic.

SIL's AbyssinicaSIL

• Download font — High quality font.

Ethiopia Jiret

• Self installer for Windows.
• Download font only — On Windows, unzip the .ttf file to any folder on your disk, then right-click to install it, or move it to the Windows special "Fonts" folder using the Explorer (do not extract it there directly, or it won't be installed correctly).

Ethiozena's Typing Help

• Typing Help.

TITUS Cyberbit

• Home page — With download and install instructions.

freeSerif

• zip file at Download font — On Windows, unzip the .ttf files to any folder on your disk, then right-click the .ttf files to install them, or move them to the special "C:\Windows\FontsFonts" folder using the Explorer (do not extract it there directly, or it won't be installed correctly).

Code 2000 (Shareware)

• Home page – font for several dozens of scripts from around the world in one huge file, but may cause issues for Windows.

GeezEdit Amharic (Free)

• Web Site - No need for fonts and drivers to type and search in Amharic online.

Commercial software

• software at http://www.amharicsoftwares.com/

• Omniglot
• WAZU JAPAN
• Keyman Desktop + Ethiopic keyboards
• GeezWord

Known compatibility issues

• RaghuHindi (raghindi.ttf) will cause bold and/or italic Ethiopic text to not show up. To fix the problem, just remove the font.