ethiopic-text

Every Amharic search box is quietly broken. Here is the fix, running live.

"ሠላም".includes("ሰላም") // false isFoldEquivalent("ሠላም", "ሰላም") // true

Search that actually finds things

A shop list, and one query. The left column is what your app does today. Try a variant spelling — ሠላም, ፀሐይ, ኀገር, ዓለም.

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ሰላም ሱቅ

ሰላም ፋርማሲ

Level 1 folds the homophone consonants. Level 2 also folds the glottal 4th order, which is right for matching and wrong for storage.

First

Second

Different

fold("ዓለም") → "ኣለም" · fold("አለም") → "አለም"

Level 2 is search-only. It is a lossy index key — store it beside your text, never instead of it.

Type selam. Each keystroke either commits a syllable or waits, because s could still become ሰ, ሸ, or ስ.

Latin keystrokes

ሰላም

"m" is still pending — it shows as ም, but another keystroke could still change it (mi would be ሚ).

No zero, no positional notation. ፻ and ፼ multiply what comes before them, so 1994 is literally 19, hundred, 94.

Number (1–999,999)

Geez numeral

1994 → ፲፱፻፺፬

Parsed as text into santim, so the answer is an exact integer. Geez numerals work as input too — try ፻.

Amount

125050 santim — an exact integer, parsed as text

ETB 1,250.50
1,250.50 ብር
አንድ ሺህ ሁለት መቶ ሃምሳ ብር ከሃምሳ ሳንቲም