Arabic vs Ethiopic (Geʻez)
Writing system comparison · ISO Arab vs ISO Ethi
Arabic is a Living Right-to-left script from Middle Eastern (1,413 Unicode characters) used by 60 languages. Ethiopic (Geʻez) is a Living Left-to-right script from African used by 6 languages. A key difference is reading direction: Arabic reads Right-to-left, while Ethiopic (Geʻez) reads Left-to-right.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Attribute | Arabic | Ethiopic (Geʻez) |
|---|---|---|
| ISO Code | Arab | Ethi |
| Direction | Right-to-left | Left-to-right |
| Status | Living | Living |
| Region | Middle Eastern | African |
| Characters | 1,413 | — |
| Languages | 60 | 6 |
| Script Type | Abjad | Abugida |
| Descended From | Nabataean | Old South Arabian |
| Total Speakers | ~291M | ~41M |
| Introduced | 400 CE | 350 CE |
| Unicode Ranges |
U+0600–U+06FF
U+0750–U+077F
U+0870–U+089F
U+08A0–U+08FF
U+FB50–U+FDFF
U+FE70–U+FEFC
U+10E60–U+10E7E
U+10EC2–U+10EFF
U+1EE00–U+1EEF1
|
Only in Arabic
60 languages
Used by Both
0 languages
No shared languages
More Comparisons
Arabic vs Latin
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Latin
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Devanagari (Nagari)
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Devanagari (Nagari)
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Cyrillic
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Cyrillic
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Bengali (Bangla)
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Bengali (Bangla)
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Thai
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Thai
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Han (Simplified variant)
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Han (Simplified variant)
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Hebrew
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Hebrew
LTR · LTR
Arabic vs Greek
RTL · LTR
Ethiopic (Geʻez) vs Greek
LTR · LTR
Data sourced from the ISO 15924 registry, Unicode CLDR, and the Unicode Character Database.