Amharic

Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is mainly spoken by the Amhara people as their first language, and it also acts as a common language, called a lingua franca, for many different groups of people living in cities across Ethiopia.

Amharic is very important because it is the official working language of the Ethiopian federal government and several of Ethiopia's federal regions. In 2020, over 33.7 million people in Ethiopia spoke Amharic as their first language, and more than 25.1 million people used it as a second language. This means that altogether, over 58.8 million people could understand or speak Amharic, making it the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia.

Amharic is written from left to right using a special writing system that developed from the ancient Geʽez script. This writing system is called an abugida (አቡጊዳ), where each symbol represents a combination of a consonant and a vowel. The symbols used in this script are known as fidäl (ፊደል), meaning 'script, alphabet, letter, character'. Even though there is no single agreed-upon way to write Amharic using the regular Latin alphabet, linguists often use a common system to help study the language.

Dialects

Amharic has many dialects, but they are all easy to understand each other. One special dialect is called Jewish Amharic, used by the Beta Israel people who now live mostly in Israel. In this dialect, some Christian phrases are changed to Jewish ones. For example, instead of saying "It is good that Mary had pardoned you" to congratulate a mother after having a baby, they say "It is good that God has relieved you peacefully." This dialect also includes words from Modern Hebrew because many Beta Israel live in Israel. However, Jewish Amharic is gradually being replaced by Hebrew.

History

Amharic has served as the official working language of Ethiopia since the late 12th century. It was used in courts, trade, everyday communication, and the military. The Amhara nobles helped make Amharic important, and it became known as the "tongue of the king." Today, Amharic is one of the official languages of Ethiopia, along with others like Oromo, Somali, Afar, and Tigrinya.

Amharic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family and is related to Geʽez, the ancient liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church. It uses a special alphabet derived from Geʽez, with 34 basic characters and many more sounds. Until 2020, Amharic was the sole official language of Ethiopia. Today, it is spoken by millions of people both inside and outside Ethiopia. Many Ethiopian Jewish communities and followers of the Rastafari religion also use Amharic.

Phonology

Amharic includes special sounds called ejective consonants, which are related to ancient sounds in Proto-Semitic. These sounds are often marked with a dot below the letter in writing.

The language also has different ways of pronouncing some sounds depending on their position in a word. For example, the sound /b/ can sound a bit softer when it appears between certain other sounds. There are also different pronunciations for sounds like /sʼ/, which can be heard in a few different ways. Vowel sounds can change slightly depending on the surrounding letters as well.

Writing system

See also: Geʽez script and Amharic Braille

The Amharic script is a special kind of writing where each symbol shows a consonant and a vowel together. It comes from an older writing system called the Geʽez script. Some sounds have more than one symbol, but readers can usually figure out the differences without any special marks.

In Amharic, the length of a consonant can change the meaning of a word, but this length is not shown in the writing. It’s similar to how some languages don’t write down certain vowel sounds or tones.

Grammar

Amharic uses a subject and a predicate to form simple sentences. For example, "Ethiopia is in Africa" or "The boy is asleep." Amharic distinguishes between different persons, numbers, and genders, which is shown in personal pronouns and verb agreements.

Amharic verbs change their form based on the subject’s person, number, and gender. There are special suffixes for objects, and nouns can show possession through suffixes as well. The language also has unique ways to form adjectives and express possession without a direct verb for "to have."

Literature

See also: Amharas § Culture, and List of Amharic writers

Amharic has a rich literary tradition. Famous writers include Baalu Girma, known for novels like The End, and Haddis Alemayehu, whose novel Love to the Grave is considered a masterpiece. The oldest written Amharic pieces are poems called "የወታደሮች መዝሙር" (Soldier songs) made to honor kings and their soldiers. Today, Amharic literature includes all kinds of books—government documents, school textbooks, religious texts, novels, poetry, proverb collections, dictionaries, and technical guides. The Bible was translated into Amharic in the 1800s by Abu Rumi, with more translations following later. One very well-known Amharic novel is Fiqir Iske Meqabir by Haddis Alemayehu, also known as Love unto Crypt. Other important authors are Baalu Girma, Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, and Kebede Michael.

Rastafari movement

The word Rastafari comes from Ras Täfäri, the pre-regnal title of Haile Selassie, made from Amharic words. Many Rastafarians learn Amharic because they see it as sacred. After Haile Selassie visited Jamaica in 1966, groups there began studying Amharic to explore African identity and culture.

Some reggae musicians, like Ras Michael, Lincoln Thompson, and Misty in Roots, have sung in Amharic. The group The Abyssinians used Amharic in songs such as "Satta Massagana". Though some thought this phrase meant 'give thanks', it actually means 'he thanked' or 'he praised'. In the Rastafari dialect called Iyaric, the word satta means 'to sit down and partake'.

Software

Amharic is supported on most major Linux distributions, such as Fedora and Ubuntu. The Amharic script is part of Unicode in the Ethiopic block. Windows 7 and Vista include the Nyala font to display and edit Amharic text.

Google added Amharic to its Language Tools, making it possible to type Amharic online without a special keyboard. Since 2004, Wikipedia has had an Amharic-language version that uses Ethiopic script. Efforts to create tools for searching and retrieving information in Amharic have been successful.