full chart link

The Ge’ez abugida syllabary group order is አ (ʾ), በ (b), ገ (g), ደ (d), ሀ (h), ወ (w), ዘ (z), ሐ (ḥ), ጠ (ṭ), የ (y), ከ (k), ለ (l), መ (m), ነ (n), ሰ (s), ዐ (ʿ), ፈ (f), ጸ (ṣ), ቀ (q), ረ (r), ሠ (ś), ተ (t), ኀ (h̬), ፀ (ḍ) [Latin phonetic equivalents in parenthesis]. A PDF of the ancient abugida alphabet is provided here.

አ/ዓ – Α/α (alpha): these characters are in absence of a true consonant, glottal stop. Both “አ” and “Α” are represented in the phonetic value of the American English word “uh.” On the other hand, “ዓ” (which is the 4th form of the “ዐ” syllabary group) and is similar to “α” as in the the American English word “otter” however with the use of the pharynx.

በ, ፈ, ወ – Ππ, Ββ, Ϝϝ, Φφ: I’ve put these characters in the same group due to their visual similarities as well as their history of betacism-esque phonetic variations with one another from one language to another whether within the same language group or otherwise. Though the Ge’ez characters have kept their forms and phonetic values since ancient times, there have been a few changes to their Greek and subsequent Romance counterparts. A full post elsewhere would do this topic justice. For now, there currently is not and is said to have never been a Greek equivalent to “በ (b)” and prior to the Aksumite conversion to Christianity, there was no indigenous “p” sound either. So, due to the visual resemblance with Π/π (pi) and very subtle difference in sound between the characters, it would not be a stretch to hypothesize a common origin or possible correlation between the letters. For the rest of the letters – in summary – it is common, at least in the Indo-European languages that the phonetic values of these letters either have since or already had evolved into another in a natural linguistic process. In lieu of a dedicated page for a deep delve into this, a few examples are: the adoption of the “v” sound from “w” in German and many Romance languages; outside of borrowed words, “v” makes the “f” sound indigenously in German; in Archaic Latin, if “b” in a word came before “s” or “t,” its pronunciation was replaced by “p,” though this rule was inconsistent; in Classical Latin “v” represented a sound similar to “w”; etc.

ሀ, ሐ: both are voiceless glottal fricatives while the latter is pharyngeal. Greek does not have a phoneme for either “h” or “ḥ” sounds. Instead, the characters in these syllabary groups could be associated, at least visually, with the Greek letters that made the remaining vowel sounds (those not visually resembling either alpha or omicron) – Ε/ε (epsilon), η (eta), and Υ/υ (upsilon).

ዘ: though the “z” phonetic value for this character correlates with Ζ/ζ (zeta), it’s interesting that it’s nearly identical to the uppercase form of the Greek eta – “Η“; in other words, the two characters can be described as homoglyphs. In addition, their positions in their respective alphabetical order are the same; they’re both the 7th letter in their respective systems.

ፀ: this is the last syllabary group of Ancient Ge’ez – not to be confused with the final letter of the abugida script. The letter that corresponds to the same position as the Greek counterpart – 9th letter – is ጠ (ṭ). The similar phonetic value for ጠ (ṭ) and ፀ (ḍ) as well as the visual similarity of the supposed homoglyphs leaves room to speculate that these letters either have the same origin or are direct counterparts – differing due to a number of possible reasons including a dialectal variation whether from translation or occurring indigenously.

ሠ: the three limbs of this character along with it representing the likeness of a snake’s hiss, “s,” gives an indication of a possible link with the Greek counterparts Ξ/ξ (xi), Σ (sigma), Ψ/ψ (psi) – all of which involve a hissing sound. [The lower case sigma letters, σ/ς, resemble the two other Ge’ez “hiss” characters – “ሰ” and “ጸ.”]

ዎ [ወ]: Ψ/ψ (omega) is the final letter of the Greek alphabet. Maybe a coincidence but, “ዎ” (wo) which is the 7th and final order of the “ወ” syllabary group is also the last letter of the ancient Ge’ez abugida. It’s also interesting to note that a lot, if not the majority, of the root verbs that contain “ወ” as the second or third character in their spelling produce the phonological process of assimilation – effectively transforming a trilateral into a bilateral. For example, the bilaterals ኮና (from ከወነ) and ሀሎ (from ሀለወ) are root verbs. A separate letter for the Greek alphabet – omega – may have been induced as a result.

The Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician script and Ge’ez is said to have evolved from the South Arabian script which itself is a descendant of the Phoenician script.