I've long been curious about the structure of "a-bu-gi-da". What comes after the first four elements of the sequence? Finally today, I worked out an answer:
አቡጊዳሄዝቶየኩሊማኔስዖፐሩሢጣዬፍኆፀቹዊሓሼቅኞጀጹጲ
Since I'm just having fun, and I am lazy, I didn't do any real research. I just tried to construct it somewhat logically. But it's probably wrong. So, apologies to real scholars out there. If there's an authoritative answer, maybe one of you will see this post and tell me. As they say, the fastest way to get an expert answer to a question is to post a wrong answer on the Internet! While we wait, let me explain my construction.
Background
Abugida is the name used for alpha-syllabaries, like the Ethiopic (aka Ge'ez) script, where each character is a syllable equivalent to a vowel + a consonant in the roman alphabet. In fact, the term comes from ge'ez. But it is now used as a general term for alpha-syllabaries including some Indic ones. Now normally, the Ethiopic character set is organized in a matrix where the columns correspond to the vowel form and the rows to the consonant, like this:
As you can see the sequence of rows (consonants) here is not a-b-g-d-.... It is h-l-h-m-s-r-... So where does a-bu-gi-da come from? Notice it sounds a lot like: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, ...
A Greek connection
So it is related to the Greek alphabet!
Note that I say "related" and not "comes from", which may surprise Westerners who tend to think of ancient Greece as the origin of a lot of stuff. But Greek letters descended from the Phoenician alphabet, and Phoenician is Semitic, as is Ethiopic. So the relation may go back to an earlier node in the ancestor tree, or could be a more recent adoption.
Another interesting connection is that Ethiopic numerals from 1 to 6: ፩, ፪, ፫, ፬, ፭, ፮, ... look a lot like the first 6 Greek letters α, β, Γ, δ, ε, ζ, ... (lowercase except gamma being uppercase). I should note that Professor Hailu Habtu in a recent book entitled "Aksum: A glimpse into an African Civilization" (excellent book by the way) disagrees with this connection. But I digress.
The Diagonal
The a-bu-gi-da consonant order is the same as the first four letters of the Greek alphabet. But notice also the vowels correspond to the first four vowel forms of the Ethiopic alpha-syllabary. So if we imagine a different matrix, with the rows matching consonants in the Greek order, and columns matching the vowels in the Ethiopic order, then we are basically going down a diagonal. Cute!
I am fond of diagonals. Like Cantor's diagonal argument that the real numbers are not countable. A classic way to introduce the difference between countable and uncountable infinity. Everyone should learn that! And how about eigenvalue decomposition... But I digress, again.
So if we follow the diagonal, wrapping around when we run out of columns, i.e. diagonal with column index being modulo 7, we can continue the a-bu-gi-da sequence. Here's the sequence with explanations.
ቡ (bu) – በ (b), 2nd vowel /u/ (Greek: Β, beta)
ጊ (gi) – ገ (g), 3rd vowel /i/ (Greek: Γ, gamma)
ዳ (da) – ደ (d), 4th vowel /a/ (Greek: Δ, delta)
ሄ (he) – ሀ (h), 5th vowel /e/ (Greek: Η, eta)
ዝ (zə) – ዘ (z), 6th vowel /ə/ (Greek: Ζ, zeta)
ቶ (to) – ተ (t), 7th vowel /o/ (Greek: Θ, theta)
የ (yä) – የ (y), 1st vowel /ä/ (Greek: Ι, iota)
ኩ (ku) – ከ (k), 2nd vowel /u/ (Greek: Κ, kappa)
ሊ (li) – ለ (l), 3rd vowel /i/ (Greek: Λ, lambda)
ማ (ma) – መ (m), 4th vowel /a/ (Greek: Μ, mu)
ኔ (ne) – ነ (n), 5th vowel /e/ (Greek: Ν, nu)
ስ (sə) – ሰ (s), 6th vowel /ə/ (Greek: Ξ, xi)
ዖ (‘o) – ዐ (‘), 7th vowel /o/ (Greek: Ο, omicron)
ፐ (pä) – ፐ (p), 1st vowel /ä/ (Greek: Π, pi)
ሩ (ru) – ረ (r), 2nd vowel /u/ (Greek: Ρ, rho)
ሢ (śi) – ሠ (ś), 3rd vowel /i/ (Greek: Σ, sigma)
ጣ (ṭa) – ጠ (ṭ), 4th vowel /a/ (Greek: Τ, tau)
ዬ (ye) – የ (y), 5th vowel /e/ (Greek: Υ, upsilon)
ፍ (fə) – ፈ (f), 6th vowel /ə/ (Greek: Φ, phi)
ኆ (ḫo) – ኀ (ḫ), 7th vowel /o/ (Greek: Χ, chi)
ፀ (ṣä) – ፀ (ṣ), 1st vowel /ä/ (Greek: Ψ, psi)
ቹ (ču) – ቸ (č), 2nd vowel /u/ (Greek: Ω, omega, next Ge'ez consonant)
ዊ (wi) – ወ (w), 3rd vowel /i/ (no Greek equivalent, next Ge'ez consonant)
ሓ (ḥa) – ሐ (ḥ), 4th vowel /a/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
ሼ (še) – ሸ (š), 5th vowel /e/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
ቅ (qə) – ቀ (q), 6th vowel /ə/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
ኞ (ño) – ኘ (ñ), 7th vowel /o/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
ጀ (ǧä) – ጀ (ǧ), 1st vowel /ä/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
ጹ (ṣu) – ጸ (ṣ), 2nd vowel /u/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
ጲ (p̣i) – ጰ (p̣), 3rd vowel /i/ (next Ge'ez consonant)
To generate this I used the Grok large language model. After all, LLMs are language sequence completers, how appropriate! It took a bit of prompting to get to this. If you are interested, here's the whole conversation with Grok.
Actually this whole exercise was as much to see if an LLM could do this as it was about the subject itself.
Oh by the way, if you want serious content on Ethiopic, check out geez.org.
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