Ethiopia’s ancient alphabet could make a debut on SMS

By ANTHONY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Nov 11, 2004 (AP) — One of the world’s ancient alphabets could flash on the screen of cell phones in the third most populous nation in Africa, easing communications for millions who can only read and write the Ethiopic script.

Ethiopian and U.S.-based scientists adapted the script, which dates back to the 4th century, for use in text messaging — known as short message service or SMS, the scientists said Thursday.

“We are enabling one of humanity’s oldest scripts to enter the wireless age,” said Samuel Kinde, who proposed the research.

“There is a significant amount of interest from potential users as well as from chipset manufacturers,” said Samuel, an engineering professor from the University of California in San Diego.

The Ethiopic script is used for Amharic — the national language of Ethiopia’s 70 million people. Ethiopia is the only African nation with its own alphabet which is still widely used.

Ethiopic is the medium for Ethiopian literature and is still in use in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, chanted by priests in incense-filled churches across the Horn of Africa nation.

The script, however, is incompatible with modern communication devices because of its ungainly 345-letter alphabet, compared with 26 letters in the Latin alphabet.

Scientists had to make the ancient alphabet fit the standard handset.

They cut it down to 210 characters before mapping a base alphabet of 28 letters onto a handset — with users having to thumb in more keystrokes if they wanted the additional characters.

Ethiopia lags behind in harnessing the modern technology. SMS was introduced last December.

Kasu Yilala, the infrastructure minister, said Ethiopia as one of the “least connected” countries in the world, which was “closing the door to economic opportunity.”