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112-574: Amharic ( / æ m ˈ h ær ɪ k / am- HARR -ik or / ɑː m ˈ h ɑːr ɪ k / ahm- HAR -ik ; native name : አማርኛ , romanized :  Amarəñña , IPA: [amarɨɲːa] ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language , which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages . It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas , and also serves as

224-514: A lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns in Ethiopia . The language serves as the official working language of the Ethiopian federal government, and is also the official or working language of several of Ethiopia's federal regions . As of 2020, it has over 33,700,000 mother-tongue speakers and more than 25,100,000 second language speakers in 2019, making

336-700: A pejorative way. For example, Romani people often prefer that term to exonyms such as Gypsy (from the name of Egypt ), and the French term bohémien , bohème (from the name of Bohemia ). People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that, at one time, had been ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/ Gdańsk , Auschwitz/ Oświęcim and Karlsbad/ Karlovy Vary ); and Russian names for non-Russian locations that were subsequently renamed or had their spelling changed (e.g. Kiev/ Kyiv ). In recent years, geographers have sought to reduce

448-655: A typhus epidemic, and a major smallpox epidemic (1889–1890). About one-third of the Ethiopian population died during that period. It is estimated that between a half to two-thirds of the Beta Israel community died during that period. The myth of the lost tribes in Ethiopia intrigued Jacques Faitlovitch , a former student of Joseph Halévy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris . In 1904, Faitlovitch decided to lead

560-575: A Jewish Queen Judith signed a pact with the Agaw tribes which were pagans . Around 960, the large confederation led by Queen Judith, which included both forces of the Agaw tribes and the Beta Israel forces, invaded the capital city of Aksum , conquering and destroying it (including many churches and monasteries which were burned and destroyed) and imposed the Jewish rule over Aksum. However, legends surrounding

672-596: A Jewish queen called Judith (Gudit) have been dismissed by scholars like Edward Ullendorff as without foundation in any historical facts. According to Jewish traveler, Eldad ha-Dani , the Tribe of Dan established their own kingdom in Ethiopia, "They went by way of Egypt further down the upper Nile River and settled in Ethiopia, in East Africa. The Danites were great warriors, and after fighting many battles against native tribes, they established themselves securely, with

784-630: A devastating campaign against the Beta Israel with the use of cannons that he recently captured from the Ottomans. While on this campaign, Sarsa Dengel learned that the Borana Oromo had invaded the provinces of Shewa , Wej , and Damot . Despite this, Sarsa Dengel refused to defend these territories against the Oromos and instead continued to focus his attention on the Beta Israel. This decision generated considerable frustration among his officials but

896-673: A kingdom of their own." Marco Polo and Benjamin of Tudela also mention the existence of an Ethiopian Jewish community. The earliest recorded mention of the Beta Israel comes from the Royal Chronicle of Emperor Amda Seyon , who sent troops to pacify the northwest provinces of Semien , Tselemt , Tsegede and Wegara where the Beta Israel had been gaining prominence. He sent troops there to fight people "like Jews" ( Ge'ez ከመ:አይሁድ kama ayhūd ). According to both Ethiopian written accounts and Beta Israel oral tradition, Emperor Yeshaq (1414–1429) began to exert religious pressure on

1008-534: A letter to his children. The man told him of the ongoing conflict of his nation with the Christian Abyssinians ; he relayed some of the principles of his faith, which, Ferrara concluded, balanced between Karaite and Rabbinical Judaism . His people were not familiar with the Talmud and did not observe Hanukkah , but their canon contained the book of Esther and they had an oral interpretation of

1120-559: A neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone. Thus, an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names ( Dutch / Flemish : Brussel ; French : Bruxelles ). Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling, and word category . The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over

1232-710: A new mission in northern Ethiopia. Faitlovitch obtained funding from the Jewish philanthropist Edmond de Rothschild , traveled and lived among the Ethiopian Jews. In addition, Faitlovitch managed to disrupt the efforts of the Protestant missionaries to convert the Ethiopian Jews, who at the time attempted to persuade the Ethiopian Jews that all the Jews in the world believe in Jesus . Between the years 1905–1935, he brought out 25 young Ethiopian Jewish boys, whom he planted in

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1344-400: A period of civil unrest, on September 12, 1974, a pro-communist military junta , known as the " Derg " ("committee"), seized power after ousting the emperor Haile Selassie I . The Derg installed a government which was socialist in name and military in style. Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam assumed power as head of state and Derg chairman . Mengistu's years in office were marked by

1456-668: A result of this period of oppression, much traditional Jewish culture and practice was lost or changed. Nonetheless, the Beta Israel community appears to have continued to flourish during this period. The capital of Ethiopia, Gondar , in Dembiya , was surrounded by Beta Israel lands. The Beta Israel served as craftsmen, masons, and carpenters for the Emperors from the 16th century onwards. Such roles had been shunned by Ethiopians as lowly and less honorable than farming. These accounts also recounted that some knowledge of Hebrew persisted among

1568-619: A result, several European rabbis proclaimed that they recognized the Jewishness of the Beta Israel community, and eventually in 1868 the organization " Alliance Israélite Universelle " decided to send the Jewish-French Orientalist Joseph Halévy to Ethiopia in order to study the conditions of the Ethiopian Jews. Upon his return to Europe, Halévy made a very favorable report of the Beta Israel community in which he called for world Jewish community to save

1680-529: A totalitarian-style government, and the country's massive militarization, financed by the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and assisted by Cuba. Communism was officially adopted by the new regime during the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a result, the new regime gradually began to embrace anti-religious and anti-Israeli positions, as well as showing hostility towards the Jews of Ethiopia. Towards

1792-577: Is an abugida , and the graphemes of the Amharic writing system are called fidäl . It is derived from a modification of the Ge'ez script . Each character represents a consonant+vowel sequence, but the basic shape of each character is determined by the consonant, which is modified for the vowel. Some consonant phonemes are written by more than one series of characters: / ʔ / , / s / , / tsʼ / , and / h / (the last one has four distinct letter forms). This

1904-662: Is because these fidäl originally represented distinct sounds, but phonological changes merged them. The citation form for each series is the consonant+ ä form, i.e. the first column of the fidäl . The Amharic script is included in Unicode , and glyphs are included in fonts available with major operating systems. As in most other Ethiopian Semitic languages , gemination is contrastive in Amharic. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another; for example, alä 'he said', allä 'there is'; yǝmätall 'he hits', yǝmmättall 'he will be hit'. Gemination

2016-500: Is called an abugida ( አቡጊዳ ). The graphemes are called fidäl ( ፊደል ), which means "script", "alphabet", "letter", or "character". There is no universally agreed-upon Romanization of Amharic into Latin script . The Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common among linguists specializing in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Amharic has been the official working language of Ethiopia, language of

2128-539: Is in Africa.' ልጁ Lǝǧ-u the boy ተኝቷል täññǝtʷall. asleep is ልጁ ተኝቷል Lǝǧ-u täññǝtʷall. {the boy} {asleep is} 'The boy is asleep.' ( -u is a definite article. Lǝǧ is 'boy'. Lǝǧu is 'the boy') አየሩ Ayyäru the weather ደስ däss pleasant Endonym An exonym (also known as xenonym ) is an established, non-native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it

2240-675: Is later mentioned in the Futuh al-Habasa , the history of the conquests of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi . According to this source, Emperor Dawit II took refuge in a royal stronghold of Bahr Amba on the Simien Mountains , while besieging the stronghold, the Imam came across the Jews of Simien. The chronicler describes the encounter between the Imam and the Beta Israel: Jewish Abyssinians (once) controlled

2352-468: Is most commonly used. The changes to Hanyu Pinyin were not only financially costly but were unpopular with the locals, who opined that the Hanyu Pinyin versions were too difficult for non-Chinese or non-Mandarin speakers to pronounce. The government eventually stopped the changes by the 1990s, which has led to some place names within a locality having differing spellings. For example, Nee Soon Road and

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2464-468: Is mostly heard as the affricate sound [ t͡sʼ ]. The rhotic consonant is realized as a trill when geminated and a tap otherwise. The closed central unrounded vowel ⟨ə⟩ /ɨ/ and mid-central vowel ⟨ä⟩ /ə/ are generally fronted to [ ɪ ] and [ ɛ ], respectively, following palatal consonants , and generally retracted and rounded to [ ʊ ] and [ ɔ ], respectively, following labialized velar consonants . The Amharic script

2576-416: Is not indicated in Amharic orthography, but Amharic readers typically do not find this to be a problem. This property of the writing system is analogous to the vowels of Arabic and Hebrew or the tones of many Bantu languages , which are not normally indicated in writing. Ethiopian novelist Haddis Alemayehu , who was an advocate of Amharic orthography reform , indicated gemination in his novel Love to

2688-718: Is not its Dutch exonym. Old place names that have become outdated after renaming may afterward still be used as historicisms . For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad , not the Siege of St. Petersburg because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad ( Калининград ), as it has been called since 1946. Likewise, Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul )

2800-563: Is now spelled Xinyi . However, districts like Tamsui and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules. As a matter of fact, most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization , including Taipei , Taichung , Taitung , Keelung , and Kaohsiung . During the 1980s, the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names, especially those with Teochew, Hokkien or Cantonese names, as part of

2912-549: Is still called Constantinople ( Κωνσταντινούπολη ) in Greek, although the name was changed in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past between 1923 and 1930 (the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase ). Prior to Constantinople , the city was known in Greek as Byzantion ( Greek : Βυζάντιον , Latin : Byzantium ), named after its mythical founder, Byzas . Following independence from

3024-572: Is the human tendency towards neighbours to "be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup ." For example, Matisoff notes, Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the Palaung name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people ; both the Jingpo and Burmese use

3136-960: Is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system. For instance, Deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and Germania in English and Italian , respectively, Alemania and Allemagne in Spanish and French , respectively, Niemcy in Polish , Saksa and Saksamaa in Finnish and Estonian . The terms autonym , endonym , exonym and xenonym are formed by adding specific prefixes to

3248-671: Is very corrupt. They have their Hebrew Bibles and sing the psalms in their synagogues. The isolation of the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia was also reported by the Scottish explorer James Bruce who visited Gondar in the 18th century: "The only copy of the Old Testament, which they have, is the translation in Geez, the same made use of by the Abyssinian Christians, who are the only scribes, and sell these copies to

3360-656: The Beijing dialect , became the official romanization method for Mandarin in the 1970s. As the Mandarin pronunciation does not perfectly map to an English phoneme , English speakers using either romanization will not pronounce the names correctly if standard English pronunciation is used. Nonetheless, many older English speakers still refer to the cities by their older English names, and even today they are often used in their traditional associations, such as Peking duck , Peking opera , and Peking University . As for Nanjing,

3472-606: The Greek root word ónoma ( ὄνομα , 'name'), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nómn̥ . The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek: The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications, thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms. Marcel Aurousseau , an Australian geographer , first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957). Endonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories: As it pertains to geographical features ,

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3584-679: The Kingdom of Italy , headed by the fascist leader Benito Mussolini , invaded and occupied Ethiopia. The Italian regime showed hostility towards the Jews of Ethiopia. The racial laws which were enacted in Italy were also applied to Italian East Africa. Mussolini attempted to reach an agreement with Britain which would recognize Italian East Africa, during which Mussolini proposed to solve the " Jewish problem " in Europe and in Palestine by resettling

3696-750: The Oral Law , nor do they light the Sabbath candle . War ceases not from amongst them, and every day they take captives from one another... In the same responsum , he concludes that if the Ethiopian Jewish community wished to return to rabbinic Judaism, they would be received and welcomed into the fold, just as the Karaites who returned to the teachings of the Rabbanites in the time of Rabbi Abraham ben Maimonides . The contemporary history of

3808-526: The Roman Empire applied the word " Walha " to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later (as Celts became increasingly romanised) Romance languages; thence: During the late 20th century, the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in

3920-557: The Singapore Armed Forces base Nee Soon Camp are both located in Yishun but retained the old spelling. Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'." In Basque , the term erdara/erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque (usually Spanish or French). Many millennia earlier,

4032-514: The Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones". The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms. The name " Apache " most likely derives from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The name " Sioux ", an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux , most likely derived from a Proto-Algonquian term, * -a·towe· ('foreign-speaking). The name " Comanche " comes from

4144-547: The Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of dialects. For example, the area of Nee Soon, named after Teochew -Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon (Hanyu Pinyin: Lín Yìshùn) became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling. In contrast, Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation au-kang

4256-541: The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines: For example, India , China , Egypt , and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bhārat ( भारत ), Zhōngguó ( 中国 ), Masr ( مَصر ), and Deutschland , respectively. There are also typonyms of specific features, for example hydronyms for bodies of water. In

4368-511: The Ute word kɨmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger". The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the "Anasazi", a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies", and contemporary Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym. Various Native-American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of "original people" or "normal people", with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal. Although

4480-499: The total number of speakers over 58,800,000. Amharic is the largest, most widely spoken language in Ethiopia, and the second most spoken mother-tongue in Ethiopia (after Oromo ). Amharic is also the second most widely spoken Semitic language in the world (after Arabic ). Amharic is written left-to-right using a system that grew out of the Geʽez script . The segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units

4592-489: The " London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews " which specialized in the conversion of Jews. The organization began its operating in Ethiopia in 1859. The Protestant missionaries, who worked under the direction of a converted Jew named Henry Aaron Stern, converted many of the Beta Israel community to Christianity. Between 1859 and 1922, about 2,000 Beta Israel members converted to Ethiopian Christianity (they did not convert to Protestantism due to an agreement

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4704-561: The "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian німці (nimtsi); Russian немцы (nemtsy), Slovene Nemčija), and was borrowed into Hungarian , Romanian , and Ottoman Turkish (in which case it referred specifically to Austria ). One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term " Slav " suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence " Slovakia " and " Slovenia " for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context,

4816-512: The 1980s until the early 1990s. Addis Ababa at one point had a prominent Adenite community. Most of them left fairly quickly, with many making aliyah , however some stayed and established synagogues and Hebrew schools. By 1986, there were only six Adeni families left in the city, and almost all of their property was seized by the Mengistu regime. Ethiopia has an embassy in Tel Aviv ;

4928-528: The Beta Israel community begins with the reunification of Ethiopia in the mid-19th century during the reign of Tewodros II . At that time, the Beta Israel population was estimated at between 200,000 and 350,000 people. Despite occasional contacts in an earlier stage, the West only became well-aware of the existence of the Beta Israel community when they came in contact through the Protestant missionaries of

5040-679: The Beta Israel include the Beta Abraham and the Falash Mura , Ethiopian Jews who were converted to Christianity, some of whom have reverted to Judaism. Addis Ababa is home to a small community of Adeni Jews . Chabad also maintains a presence in Addis Ababa. According to the Beta Israel tradition, the legendary Kingdom of Beta Israel, later called the Kingdom of Simien, was initially established after Ezana declared Christianity as

5152-579: The Beta Israel then switched their alliance and began supporting Emperor Gelawdewos against the Muslim invaders. The Christian Ethiopians did succeed eventually in defeating the Muslims and preventing Ahmed Gragn from conquering Ethiopia. The Beta Israel then maintained good relations with Gelawdewos until the end of his reign. During the reign (1563–1597) of Emperor Sarsa Dengel , the Emperor launched

5264-418: The Beta Israel which sparked a revolt. Following the defeat of the rebellion, Yeshaq divided the territories of the Jews into three provinces, which were controlled by commissioners appointed by him. He reduced the Jews' social status below that of Christians and forced the Jews to convert or lose their land. It would be given away as rist , a type of land qualification that rendered it forever inheritable by

5376-817: The Chinese word yeren ( 野人 ; 'wild men', 'savage', 'rustic people' ) as the name for Lisu people . As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym, consequently, many European capitals have English exonyms, for example: In contrast, historically less-prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms, but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby, e.g. German : Laibach and Agram (the latter being obsolete); Italian : Lubiana and Zagabria . Madrid , Berlin , Oslo , and Amsterdam , with identical names in most major European languages , are exceptions. Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions, in that whilst

5488-494: The Emperor Susenyos I . By 1624, the revolt had been quelled, and the conclusive defeat of a subsequent uprising the following year marked the end of the political autonomy of the Beta Israel. After the Beta Israel autonomy in Ethiopia ended in the 1620s, Emperor Susenyos I confiscated their lands and forcibly baptized others. In addition, the practice of any form of Jewish religion was forbidden in Ethiopia. As

5600-477: The Emperor justified his action by stating: "It is better for me that I fight with the enemies of the blood of Jesus Christ [i.e. Jews ] than go to fight against the Galla ." The Ethiopian forces continued to pacify the Jews, culminating in the capture and execution of the Jewish rebel leader, Goshen. Following his death, many of the Beta Israel committed mass suicide. In 1614, the Jews of Seimen rebelled against

5712-535: The Ethiopian Jewish population permission to leave his empire. Between the years 1965 and 1975, a relatively small group of Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel. The Beta Israel immigrants in that period were mainly a very few men who had studied and come to Israel on a tourist visa, and then remained in the country illegally. Some supporters in Israel who recognized their Jewishness decided to assist them. These supporters began organizing associations, including one under

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5824-544: The Ethiopian Jews, to establish Jewish schools in Ethiopia, and even suggested to bring thousands of Beta Israel members to settle in Ottoman Syria (a dozen years before the actual establishment of the first Zionist organization). Nevertheless, after a brief period in which the media coverage generated a great interest in the Beta Israel community, the interest among the Jewish communities worldwide declined. This happened mainly because serious doubts still remained about

5936-408: The Ethiopianist tradition they are often transcribed with a dot below the letter. The notation of central vowels in the Ethiopianist tradition is shown in angled brackets. The voiced bilabial plosive /b/ is phonetically realized as a voiced labial approximant [β̞] medially between sonorants in non- geminated form. The fricative ejective / sʼ / is heard as a fricative ejective [ sʼ ], but

6048-410: The Falasha Jews; and no controversy, or dispute about the text, has ever yet arisen between the professors of the two religions. They have no Ketubah, or various readings; they have never heard of Talmud, Targum, or Cabala; neither have they any fringes or ribband upon their garments; nor is there, as far as I could learn, one scribe among them." The Beta Israel lost their relative economic advantage in

6160-470: The Grave by placing a dot above the characters whose consonants were geminated, but this practice is rare. Punctuation includes the following: One may construct simple Amharic sentences by using a subject and a predicate . Here are a few simple sentences: ኢትዮጵያ ʾItyop̣p̣ya Ethiopia አፍሪካ ʾAfrika Africa ውስጥ wǝsṭ in ናት nat is ኢትዮጵያ አፍሪካ ውስጥ ናት ʾItyop̣p̣ya ʾAfrika wǝsṭ nat {Ethiopia} {Africa} {in} {is} 'Ethiopia

6272-491: The Greeks thought that all non-Greeks were uncultured and so called them " barbarians ", which eventually gave rise to the exonym " Berber ". Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the Slavic term for the Germans, nemtsi , possibly deriving from plural of nemy ("mute"); standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak

6384-448: The Jewish communities of Europe, for example Salomon Yesha , Taamerat Ammanuel , Abraham Adgeh , Yona Bogale , and Tadesse Yacob . Following his visit in Ethiopia, Faitlovitch created an international committee for the Beta Israel community, popularized the awareness of their existence through his book Notes de voyage chez les Falashas (1905), and raised funds to enable the establishment of schools in their villages. In 1908,

6496-496: The Jewish religion was effectively lost for some years, before being restored in the 1840s by Abba Widdaye, the preeminent monk of Qwara . Rabbi David ibn Zimra of Egypt (1479–1573), when asked about a certain black-skinned woman taken captive from Ethiopia ( Judeo-Arabic : אל-חבאש ) and sold to a Jew in Egypt (the woman claiming to be of Jewish descent), wrote of the impressions the Jews of Egypt had at that time of their Ethiopian counterparts who claimed Jewish descent: ...Lo!

6608-411: The Jewishness of the Beta Israel community, and because the Alliance Israélite Universelle organization did not comply with Halévy's recommendations . Between 1888 and 1892, northern Ethiopia experienced a devastating famine . The famine was caused by rinderpest that killed the majority of all cattle (see 1890s African rinderpest epizootic ). Conditions worsened with cholera outbreaks (1889–1892),

6720-409: The Jews in the north-west Ethiopian districts of Gojjam and Begemder , along with the Beta Israel community. The proposed Jewish state was to be federally united with the Italian Empire. Mussolini's plan was never implemented. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, many Ethiopian Jews began contemplating immigrating to Israel. Nevertheless, the Emperor Haile Selassie refused to grant

6832-492: The Portuguese Colónia closely reflects the Latin original. In some cases, no standardised spelling is available, either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalysed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English, which has

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6944-400: The Protestant missionaries had with the government of Ethiopia). The relatively low number of conversions is partly explained by the strong reaction to the conversions from religious leadership of the Beta Israel community . The Beta Israel members who were converted to Christianity are known today as "Falash Mura". The Protestant missionaries' activities in Ethiopia provoked European Jewry. As

7056-419: The Province of Guangdong ( 广东 ; Guǎngdōng ). However, older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts, for example: Peking (Beijing; duck , opera , etc.), Tsingtao (Qingdao), and Canton (Guangdong). In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local Chinese variety instead of Mandarin , in the case of Xiamen , where the name Amoy is closer to the Hokkien pronunciation. In

7168-400: The Red Sea was defined by reciprocal exchange, if it even occurred at all, and that Ethio-Semitic-speaking ethnic groups should not be characterized as foreign invaders. Amharic is a South Ethio-Semitic language, along with Gurage , Argobba , Harari , and others. Due to the social stratification of the time, the Cushitic Agaw adopted the South Ethio-Semitic language and eventually absorbed

7280-402: The Russians used the village name of Chechen , medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus , a word for Hell , to produce Tartar ), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians . The Germanic invaders of

7392-431: The Semitic population. Amharic thus developed with a Cushitic substratum and a Semitic superstratum . The northernmost South Ethio-Semitic speakers, or the proto-Amhara, remained in constant contact with their North Ethio-Semitic neighbors, evidenced by linguistic analysis and oral traditions. A 7th century southward shift of the center of gravity of the Kingdom of Aksum and the ensuing integration and Christianization of

7504-443: The Southern branch), and the number of geographically distinct Cushitic languages that have influenced Amharic at different points in time (e.g. Oromo influence beginning in the 16th century) support a natural evolution of Amharic from a Proto-Ethio-Semitic language with considerable Cushitic influences (similar to Gurage, Tigrinya, etc.). The Amharic ejective consonants correspond to the Proto-Semitic " emphatic consonants ." In

7616-420: The Torah. Ferrara further recorded that they had their own language, that the journey from their land lasted six months, and that the biblical Gozan river was found within their borders. In the mid 15th century, Ethiopian missionaries began to carry out evangelization efforts in Seimen and Tselemt. Later on, the Beta Israel revolted against the Emperor Zara Yaqob (1434–1468) in the region of Seimen, this revolt

7728-406: The UK in 1947, many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages, or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name. The name Madras , now Chennai , may be a special case . When the city was first settled by English people , in the early 17th century, both names were in use. They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into

7840-461: The [Christian] empire was much larger, but since the [pagan and Muslim] Gallas have been pressing in upon them [from the east and south], the Emperors have pressed in upon them [i. e., the Jews to the west?] much more and took Dambea and Ogara from them by force of arms many years ago. In Seman, however, they defended themselves with great determination, helped by the position and the ruggedness of their mountains. Many rebels ran away and joined them till

7952-478: The alphabet used for writing the Geʽez language. There are 34 basic characters, each of which has seven forms depending on which vowel is to be pronounced in the syllable. There are also 49 "wa" letters, which form compound sounds involving "w." All together, the alphabet has some 280 letters. Until 2020 Amharic was the sole official language of Ethiopia. The 2007 census reported that Amharic was spoken by 21.6 million native speakers in Ethiopia. More recent sources state

8064-575: The ambassador is also accredited to the Holy See , Greece and Cyprus . Israel has an embassy in Addis Ababa ; the ambassador is also accredited to Rwanda and Burundi . Israel has been one of Ethiopia's most reliable suppliers of military assistance, supporting different Ethiopian governments during the Eritrean War of Independence . In 2012, an Ethiopian-born Israeli, Belaynesh Zevadia ,

8176-430: The case of Beijing , the adoption of the exonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignised pronunciation, with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as / ʒ / . One exception of Pinyin standardization in mainland China is the spelling of the province Shaanxi , which is the mixed Gwoyeu Romatzyh –Pinyin spelling of the province. That is because if Pinyin were used to spell

8288-409: The case of endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms), Chinese , German , and Dutch , for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwén ( 中文 ), Deutsch , and Nederlands , respectively. By their relation to endonyms, all exonyms can be divided into three main categories: Sometimes, a place name may be unable to use many of

8400-586: The chief rabbis of 45 countries made a joint statement officially declaring that Ethiopian Jews were indeed Jewish. The Jewishness of the Beta Israel community became openly supported amongst the majority of the European Jewish communities during the early 20th century. In 1921, Abraham Isaac Kook , the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine , recognized the Beta Israel community as Jews. In 1935, armed forces of

8512-573: The courts, the language of trade and everyday communications and of the military since the late 12th century. The Amhara nobles supported the Zagwe prince Lalibela in his power struggle against his brothers which led him to make Amharic Lessana Negus as well as fill the Amhara nobles in the top positions of his Kingdom. The appellation of "language of the king" ( Ge'ez : ልሳነ ነጋሢ ; "Lǝssanä nägaśi," Amharic : የነጋሢ ቋንቋ "Yä-nägaśi qʷanqʷa") and its use in

8624-680: The direction of Ovadia Hazzi, a Yemeni Jew and former sergeant in the Israeli army who married a wife from the Beta Israel community after the Second World War. Some of the illegal immigrants managed to regularize their status with the Israeli authorities through the assistance of these support associations. Some agreed to "convert" to Judaism, which helped them to regularize their personal status and thus remain in Israel. Those who had regularized their status often brought their families to Israel as well. In 1973, Ovadia Hazzi officially raised

8736-576: The district of Semien . They are called, in their own language, Falasa, because they chant the praise of the One God and have faith in none other. They have no Prophet and no saint. For forty years the people of Bahr Amba had enslaved them and put them to work as servants. They tilled the fields for them. After the imam had won the victory over the patrician Sa'ul, all the Falasa came from deep valleys and even from mountain caves – because they did not dwell in

8848-864: The endonym Nederland is singular, while all the aforementioned translations except Irish are plural. Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed, e.g., from a third language. For example, the Slovene exonyms Dunaj ( Vienna ) and Benetke ( Venice ) are native, but the Avar name of Paris, Париж ( Parizh ) is borrowed from Russian Париж ( Parizh ), which comes from Polish Paryż , which comes from Italian Parigi . A substantial proportion of English-language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French; for example: Many exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language, mediated by differences in phonetics, while others may result from translation of

8960-404: The endonym, or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature. According to James Matisoff , who introduced the term autonym into linguistics , exonyms can also arise from the "egocentric" tendency of in-groups to identify themselves with "mankind in general", producing an endonym that out groups would not use, while another source

9072-454: The fate of the Ethiopian Jews and fear for their well-being contributed eventually to the Israeli government's official recognition of the Beta Israel community as Jews in 1975, for the purpose of the Law of Return. Civil war in Ethiopia prompted the Israeli government to airlift most of the Beta Israel population in Ethiopia to Israel in several covert military rescue operations which took place from

9184-521: The fourth or fifth millennium BC. Shortly afterwards, the proto-Cushitic and proto-Omotic groups would have settled in the Ethiopian highlands, with the proto-Semitic speakers crossing the Sinai Peninsula into Asia . A later return movement of peoples from South Arabia would have introduced the Semitic languages to Ethiopia. Based on archaeological evidence, the presence of Semitic speakers in

9296-555: The historical event called the Nanking Massacre (1937) uses the city's older name because that was the name of the city at the time of occurrence. Likewise, many Korean cities like Busan and Incheon (formerly Pusan and Inchǒn respectively) also underwent changes in spelling due to changes in romanization, even though the Korean pronunciations have largely stayed the same. Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with

9408-780: The late 18th and early 19th centuries, during the Zemene Mesafint , a period of recurring civil strife. Although the capital was nominally in Gondar during this time period, the decentralization of government and dominance by regional warlords resulted in a decline and exploitation of Beta Israel. According to the early 19th century missionary Samuel Gobat , the Christians considered the Jews boudas , or sorcerers, and they often fell victim to marauding warlords, as Gobat reported "Their cattle are often taken from them. They carry no arms, either for attack or defense." During this period,

9520-600: The latter in Dambea and in various regions; they live by weaving cloth and by making zargunchos [spears], ploughs and other iron articles, for they are great smiths. Between the Emperor's kingdoms and the Cafres [Negroes] who live next to the Nile outside imperial territory, mingled together with each other are many more of these Jews who are called Falashas here. The Falashas or Jews are ... of [Arabic] race [and speak] Hebrew, though it

9632-820: The letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language's lack of common sounds. Māori , having only one liquid consonant , is an example of this here. London (originally Latin : Londinium ), for example, is known by the cognate exonyms: An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands ( Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in German ( Niederlande ), French ( Pays-Bas ), Italian ( Paesi Bassi ), Spanish ( Países Bajos ), Irish ( An Ísiltír ), Portuguese ( Países Baixos ) and Romanian ( Țările de Jos ), all of which mean " Low Countries ". However,

9744-409: The lowlands, but in the mountains and in caves. They said to the imam "For forty years there has been hatred between us and the people of Bahr Amba. Let us kill them now, those who are left. And let us occupy their strongholds now that you have conquered them. We will be sufficient to do this to them. So, remain in your camp, and what we will do to them will astonish you." After the death of Dawit II ,

9856-678: The matter in 1974. In April 1975, the Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin officially accepted the Beta Israel as Jews, for the purpose of the Law of Return (an Israeli act that grants all the Jews in the world the right to immigrate to Israel). Later on, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin obtained clear rulings from Ovadia Yosef that they were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes . The Chief Rabbinate of Israel did, however, initially require them to undergo pro forma Jewish conversions , to remove any doubt as to their Jewish status. After

9968-555: The matter is well-known that there are perpetual wars between the kings of Kush , which has three kingdoms; part of which belonging to the Ishmaelites , and part of which to the Christians, and part of which to the Israelites from the tribe of Dan . In all likelihood, they are from the sect of Sadok and Boethus , who are [now] called Karaites , since they know only a few of the biblical commandments , but are unfamiliar with

10080-400: The mid-1980s, Ethiopia underwent a series of famines , exacerbated by adverse geopolitics and civil wars , which eventually resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. As a result, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians, including the Beta Israel community, became untenable and a large part tried to escape the war and the famine by fleeing to neighboring Sudan . Concern for

10192-487: The new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym. Madrasi, a term for a native of the city, has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the southern states of India . Ethiopian Jewish The history of the Jews in Ethiopia dates back millennia. The largest Jewish group in Ethiopia is the Beta Israel . Offshoots of

10304-474: The north of Lake Tana and south of the Tekezé River . However, there is no evidence that directly support its existence, and its historicity is considered unlikely by scholars. Nothing in the historical record from the 6th to the 13th centuries, however, has allowed scholars to make anything more than very tentative hypotheses concerning the Jewish communities of that time. According to Ethiopian legend,

10416-434: The number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language's cultural heritage. In some situations, the use of exonyms can be preferred. For instance, in multilingual cities such as Brussels , which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch- and French-speakers,

10528-668: The number of first-language speakers in 2018 as nearly 32 million, with another 25 million second-language speakers in Ethiopia. Additionally, 3 million emigrants outside of Ethiopia speak the language. Most of the Ethiopian Jewish communities in Ethiopia and Israel speak Amharic. Furthermore, Amharic is considered a holy language by the Rastafari religion and is widely used among its followers worldwide. Early Afro-Asiatic populations speaking proto- Semitic , proto- Cushitic and proto- Omotic languages would have diverged by

10640-586: The official religion of the Kingdom of Aksum . The inhabitants who practiced Judaism refused to convert to Christianity and began revolting; this group was referred to as "Beta Israel". Following a civil war between the Jewish population and the Christian population, the Beta Israel were said to have forged an independent state located in the Semien Mountains region and the Dembia region – situated to

10752-400: The people in the 17th century. For example, Manoel de Almeida , a Portuguese diplomat and traveller of the day, wrote that: There were Jews in Ethiopia from the first. Some of them were converted to the law of Christ Our Lord; others persisted in their blindness and formerly possessed many wide territories, almost the whole Kingdom of Dambea and the provinces of Ogara and Seman. This was when

10864-488: The present Emperor Setan Sequed [throne name of Susneyos], who in his 9th year fought and conquered the King Gideon and in his 19th year attacked Samen and killed Gideon. ... The majority and the flower of them were killed in various attacks and the remainder surrendered or dispersed in different directions. Many of them received holy baptism, but nearly all were still as much Jews as they had been before. There are many of

10976-557: The pronunciation for several names of Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing has not changed for quite some time while in Mandarin Chinese (although the prestige dialect shifted from Nanjing dialect to Beijing dialect during the 19th century), they were called Peking and Nanking in English due to the older Chinese postal romanization convention, based largely on the Nanjing dialect . Pinyin , based largely on

11088-520: The propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country: Following the 1979 declaration of Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese , many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most provincial names in mainland China , for example: Beijing ( 北京 ; Běijīng ), Qingdao ( 青岛 ; Qīngdǎo ), and

11200-822: The proto-Amhara also resulted in a high prevalence of Geʽez sourced lexicon in Amharic. Some time after the 9th century AD, Amharic diverged from its closest relative, Argobba , probably due to religious differences as the Argobba adopted Islam. In 1983, Lionel Bender proposed that Amharic may have been constructed as a pidgin as early as the 4th century AD to enable communication between Aksumite soldiers speaking Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages, but this hypothesis has not garnered widespread acceptance. The preservation in Old Amharic of VSO word order and gutturals typical of Semitic languages, Cushitic influences shared with other Ethio-Semitic languages (especially those of

11312-474: The province, it would be indistinguishable from its neighboring province Shanxi , where the pronunciations of the two provinces only differ by tones, which are usually not written down when used in English. In Taiwan, however, the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results. In Taipei , most (but not all) street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the Sinyi District

11424-623: The question of the Jewishness of the Beta Israel to the Israeli Sephardi rabbi Ovadia Yosef . The rabbi, who cited a rabbinic ruling from the 16th century Radbaz and asserted that the Beta Israel are descended from the lost tribe of Dan , acknowledged their Jewishness in February 1973. This ruling was initially rejected by the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren , who eventually changed his opinion on

11536-476: The recipient and not transferable by the Emperor. Yeshaq decreed, "He who is baptized in the Christian religion may inherit the land of his father, otherwise let him be a Falāsī ." This may have been the origin for the term "Falasha" ( falāšā , "wanderer", or "landless person"). This term is considered derogatory to Ethiopian Jews. In 1435, Elijah of Ferrara recounted meeting an Ethiopian Jew in Jerusalem in

11648-563: The results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg , which became Petrograd ( Петроград ) in 1914, Leningrad ( Ленинград ) in 1924, and again Saint Petersburg ( Санкт-Петербург , Sankt-Peterbúrg ) in 1991. In this case, although Saint Petersburg has a Dutch etymology, it was never a Dutch exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam , the Dutch name of New York City until 1664,

11760-637: The royal court are otherwise traced to the Amhara Emperor Yekuno Amlak . It is one of the official languages of Ethiopia , together with other regions like Oromo , Somali , Afar , and Tigrinya . Amharic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Southwest Semitic group and is related to Geʽez , or Ethiopic, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church; Amharic is written in a slightly modified form of

11872-475: The spelling is the same across languages, the pronunciation can differ. For example, the city of Paris is spelled the same way in French and English, but the French pronunciation [ paʁi ] is different from the English pronunciation [ ˈpærɪs ]. For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades . Livorno , for instance,

11984-455: The territory date to some time before 500 BC. Linguistic analysis suggests the presence of Semitic languages in Ethiopia as early as 2000 BC. Levine indicates that by the end of that millennium, the core inhabitants of Greater Ethiopia would have consisted of dark-skinned agropastoralists speaking Afro-Asiatic languages of the Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic branches. Other scholars such as Messay Kebede and Daniel E. Alemu argue that migration across

12096-710: The use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora . Another example, it is now common for Italian speakers to refer to some African states as Mauritius and Seychelles rather than use the Italian exonyms Maurizio and Seicelle . According to the United Nations Statistics Division : Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease

12208-540: The years, the endonym may have undergone phonetic changes, either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris , where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne , where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or

12320-527: Was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy ; not far away, Rapallo , a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym. In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus (Germanic),

12432-744: Was appointed Israeli ambassador to Ethiopia. During the imperial era , Israeli advisers trained paratroops and counterinsurgency units belonging to the Fifth Division (also called the Nebelbal, 'Flame', Division). In December 1960, a section of the Ethiopian army attempted a coup whilst the Emperor Haile Sellassie I was on a state visit in Brazil. Israel intervened, so that the Emperor could communicate directly with general Abbiye. General Abbiye and his troops remained loyal to

12544-646: Was put down ruthlessly and many Ethiopian Jews in Seimen were massacred. The chronicler documenting the reign of Zara Yaqob even goes so far as to proudly bestow upon the Emperor the title "Exterminator of the Jews". In the 16th century, the Chief Rabbi of Egypt , David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (also called Radbaz, ca.1479–1573), proclaimed that in terms of halakha the Ethiopian Beta Israel community are ethnically Jewish. The Beta Israel

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