Fidelize

Reliable, deterministic transliteration between Latin (romanized) Tigrinya and the Fidel (Geʽez) script for TypeScript / JavaScript.

Tigrinya (ትግርኛ) is spoken by millions in Eritrea (where it is one of the working languages) and in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. This library is built for developers serving either community.

import { toFidel, toLatin } from "@johnykifle/fidelize";

toFidel("ab tHti 'arat");                       // → "ኣብ ትሕቲ ዓራት"
toFidel("ab tahti arat", { mode: "casual" });   // → "ኣብ ትሕቲ ዓራት"
toLatin("ሰላም ዓለም");                            // → "selam 'alem"

Why two modes?

A casual lowercase romanization like "ab tahti arat" is ambiguous — a maps to either ኣ or ዓ depending on the word, and tahti drops a vowel that strict phonetic parsing would preserve. So this library exposes two modes:

• strict (default): a deterministic, case-sensitive scheme. Uppercase letters mark hard / emphatic consonants and ' marks the ayn series. Every input string maps to exactly one Fidel string.
• casual: lowercase-only. Looks up tokens in a dictionary of common Tigrinya words first; falls back to strict parsing for unknown tokens.

For programmatic use (search indexing, IME backends, normalization), use strict. For free-form user input, casual is more forgiving but only as accurate as its dictionary.

Strict scheme reference

Vowel orders

| Order | Suffix | s row | sound | |-------|--------|---------|-------| | 1 | e | se → ሰ | sä | | 2 | u | su → ሱ | su | | 3 | i | si → ሲ | si | | 4 | a | sa → ሳ | sa | | 5 | ie | sie → ሴ | sē | | 6 | (none) | s → ስ | sɨ / silent | | 7 | o | so → ሶ | so |

Consonants (lowercase = soft, uppercase = hard / emphatic)

| Latin | Fidel | | Latin | Fidel | | Latin | Fidel | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | h | ሀ | | n | ነ | | T | ጠ | | l | ለ | | ny | ኘ | | Ch | ጨ | | H | ሐ | | k | ከ | | P | ጰ | | m | መ | | kh | ኸ | | ts | ጸ | | r | ረ | | w | ወ | | Ts | ፀ | | s | ሰ | | z | ዘ | | f | ፈ | | sh | ሸ | | zh | ዠ | | p | ፐ | | q | ቀ | | y | የ | | v | ቨ | | qh | ቐ | | d | ደ | | | | | b | በ | | j | ጀ | | | | | t | ተ | | g | ገ | | | | | ch | ቸ | | | | | | |

Standalone vowels (no preceding consonant)

| Latin | Fidel | Latin | Fidel | |---|---|---|---| | e | አ | a | ኣ | | u | ኡ | ie | ኤ | | i | ኢ | o | ኦ | | I | እ | | |

Labialized series (suffix W on the consonant)

Five rows, each with five forms (no u, no o):

| Latin | e | i | a | ie | bare | |---------|---|---|---|----|------| | kW… | ኰ | ኲ | ኳ | ኴ | ኵ | | khW… | ዀ | ዂ | ዃ | ዄ | ዅ | | qW… | ቈ | ቊ | ቋ | ቌ | ቍ | | qhW… | ቘ | ቚ | ቛ | ቜ | ቝ | | gW… | ጐ | ጒ | ጓ | ጔ | ጕ |

kWa→ኳ, gWal→ጓል, qWanqWa→ቋንቋ.

Ayn series (prefix ')

| Latin | Fidel | Latin | Fidel | |---|---|---|---| | 'e | ዐ | 'a | ዓ | | 'u | ዑ | 'ie | ዔ | | 'i | ዒ | ' | ዕ | | | | 'o | ዖ |

Punctuation (default on; pass { punctuation: false } to disable)

| ASCII | Fidel | |---|---| | .. | ። | | , | ፣ | | ; | ፤ |

API

function toFidel(input: string, opts?: TransliterateOptions): string;
function toLatin(input: string, opts?: TransliterateOptions): string;

interface TransliterateOptions {
  mode?: "strict" | "casual";  // default: "strict"
  punctuation?: boolean;        // default: true
}

The library also re-exports the underlying alphabet table:

import { BASES, LATIN_TO_FIDEL, FIDEL_TO_LATIN, fidelChar } from "@johnykifle/fidelize";

CLI

Install globally (provides a fidelize command):

npm i -g @johnykifle/fidelize
fidelize "ab tHti 'arat"           # ኣብ ትሕቲ ዓራት
fidelize --casual "ab tahti arat"  # ኣብ ትሕቲ ዓራት
fidelize --reverse "ሰላም"           # selam
echo "selam" | fidelize

Or run ad-hoc with npx:

npx @johnykifle/fidelize "ab tHti 'arat"

Casual-mode dictionary

COMMON_WORDS is a plain Record<string, string> keyed by lowercase Latin. To add coverage:

import { COMMON_WORDS } from "@johnykifle/fidelize";
const myDict = { ...COMMON_WORDS, "newword": "ሓዲሽ ቃል" };

Open a PR if you'd like a word added to the bundled dictionary.

Building from source

npm install
npm run build      # tsup -> dist/{index.js,index.cjs,index.d.ts,cli.js}
npm test           # vitest
npm run demo       # builds and serves demo/index.html

License

MIT