http://w3c.github.io/elreq/#ethiopic_line_breaking and http://w3c.github.io/elreq/#ethiopic_hyphenation indicate that languages using the Ethiopic script break character by character, regardless of whether space or the word-separator are used between words.

However, major browsers actually break on word boundaries (space or word-sep), and i'm not sure whether that might be establishing a new trend. Any thoughts on that?