| Description | The United Nations recommended romanization system was approved in 1967
(resolution I/17), based on the Amharic to English Transliteration System
(2nd revised edition, August 1962) by the Imperial Ethiopian Mapping and
Geography Institute. The table has been published in volume II of the
conference report (see Ref. in Notes section).
The UN-approved system is not being used in Ethiopia, instead a simple
version without diacritical marks is used. In international cartographic
products mostly the BGN/PCGN 1967 system is used which differs from the
former mainly by using diacritical marks differently. Often the same
spellings are used without any diacritical marks.
Amharic uses the Ethiopic syllabic script whereby each syllable denotes a
combination of a consonant and a vowel. It has 34 basic characters, each
character having several different forms, usually called orders, according to
the vowel with which the basic character is combined. The system is mainly
reversible with the exception of some syllables of the 1st order which are
pronounced in the same manner as the syllables of the 4th order, and some
consonants.
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