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51-468: Angot ( Amharic : አንጎት, translated as "Neck," possibly referring to the province geography) was a historical region in northern Ethiopia. It was bordered on the west by Bugna and the Afar lowlands to the east and southeast, Ambassel to the southwest and Lasta to the north. Angot was also bordering Tigray to the north. Portuguese explorer Francisco Álvares wrote that the boundary between Angot and Tigray

102-416: A coin of his predecessor, Wazeba of Axum . Linguist Roger Schneider has also pointed out in an unpublished early 1990s paper anomalies in the known inscriptions of Ezana of Axum that imply that he was consciously employing an archaic style during his reign, indicating that vocalization could have occurred much earlier. As a result, some believe that the vocalization may have been adopted to preserve

153-523: 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 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

204-524: 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 the Southern branch), and

255-751: 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 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

306-823: Is a script used as an abugida (alphasyllabary) for several Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea . It originated as an abjad (consonantal alphabet) and was first used to write the Geʽez language , now the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church , the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church , the Eritrean Catholic Church , the Ethiopian Catholic Church , and Haymanot Judaism of

357-579: 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

408-430: Is an eighth form for the diphthong -wa or -oa , and for a number of those a ninth form for -jä . To represent a consonant with no following phonemic vowel, for example at the end of a syllable or in a consonant cluster , the ə ( / ɨ / ) form is used (the character in the sixth column). The letters for the labialized velar consonants are variants of the non-labialized velar consonants: Unlike

459-663: 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

510-501: 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

561-509: 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 Ge%CA%BDez script Geʽez ( / ˈ ɡ iː ɛ z / GEE -ez ; Ge'ez : ግዕዝ , romanized:  Gəʽəz , IPA: [ˈɡɨʕɨz] )

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612-469: 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

663-416: 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

714-667: Is occasionally used, ḥ ( ሐ ) is strongly favored. As Harari used the Arabic script before adopting the Geʽ;ez script, Arabic phonemes entered the language due to loanwords and language contact and were ascribed to specific consonant forms when the Geʽez script was first adopted for the language. ḥ from ( ح ) was assigned to ( ሐ ), ṫ from ( ث ) to ( ሠ ), gh from ( غ ) to ( ኀ ), kh from ( خ ) to ( ኸ ), ʽ from ( ع ) to ( ዐ ), dˁ from ( ض ) to ( ጰ ), and dh from ( ذ ) to ( ፀ ). It also uses

765-673: The Afroasiatic languages . It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas , and also serves as 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

816-992: The Beta Israel Jewish community in Ethiopia. In the languages Amharic and Tigrinya , the script is often called fidäl ( ፊደል ), meaning "script" or "letter". Under the Unicode Standard and ISO 15924 , it is defined as Ethiopic text. The Geʽez script has been adapted to write other languages, mostly Ethiosemitic , particularly Amharic in Ethiopia, and Tigrinya in both Eritrea and Ethiopia. It has also been used to write Sebat Bet and other Gurage languages and at least 20 other languages of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it has traditionally been used for Tigre and just recently for Bilen . The Geʽez script has also recently been used to write Anuak , and used in limited extent to write some other Nilo-Saharan Nilotic languages, including Majang languages. It

867-662: The Brahmic scripts in vocalization, as they are also abugidas , and the Kingdom of Aksum was an important part of major trade routes involving India and the Greco-Roman world throughout classical antiquity . According to the beliefs of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church , the original consonantal form of the Geʻez fidäl was divinely revealed to Enos "as an instrument for codifying

918-733: The Hebrew , Arabic abjad and Greek numerals . It is reduced from these systems in that it lacks digits for the multiples of 100. For example, 475 is written ( ፬፻፸፭ , that is "4-100-70-5", and 83,692 is ( ፰፼፴፮፻፺፪ "8–10,000-30-6-100-90-2". The digits historically are Greek letters over- and under-lined with a vinculum . Ethiopian numerals were borrowed from the Greek numerals , possibly via Coptic uncial letters . Punctuation, much of it modern, includes Tone marks for multiline scored layout are: Ethiopic has been assigned Unicode 3.0 codepoints between U+1200 and U+137F (decimal 4608–4991), containing

969-538: The Istifanos Monastery . Aksum by that time was no longer the center of the Christian kingdom, and was instead a frontier town, threatened from the west and south by the rising Bete Israel and from the north by invading Beja tribes. Angot was a much more defensible position, a decision that proved wise when Beta Israel captured Aksum during Queen Gudit 's invasion. The capital, called Ku'bar or Jarmi,

1020-478: 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 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,

1071-457: 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

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1122-532: The 7th and 6th centuries BCE, variants of the South Arabian script arose, evolving in the direction of the later Geʻez abugida or alphasyllabary. This evolution can be seen most clearly in evidence from inscriptions (mainly graffiti on rocks and caves) in the Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia and in many parts of Eritrea mainly in the former province of Akele Guzay . The oldest known example of

1173-469: 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

1224-524: The Geʽez script is the Hawulti obelisk in Matara, Eritrea . By the first centuries CE, what is called "Old Ethiopic" or the "Old Geʻez writing system" arose, an abjad written right-to-left (as opposed to boustrophedon like ESA) with letters basically identical to the first-order forms of the modern vocalized writing system (e.g. "k" in the form of "kä"). There were also minor differences, such as

1275-642: The Geʻez consonantal writing system was first adapted by Zegdur, a legendary king of the Agʻazyan Sabaean dynasty held to have ruled in Abyssinia (Eritrea and Ethiopia) c.  1300 BCE . Geʻez has 26 consonantal letters. Compared to the inventory of 29 consonants in the South Arabian writing system, the continuants ġ , ẓ , and South Arabian s [REDACTED] (Geʻez Sawt ሠ being derived from South Arabian s [REDACTED] ) are missing, as are z and ṯ ; these last two absences reflect

1326-483: The Geʽez language: an abjad and, later, an abugida . The abjad, used until the advent of Christianity (ca. AD 350), had 26 consonantal letters: It was properly written right-to-left. Vowels were not indicated. Modern Geʽez is written from left to right. During the adoption or introduction of Christianity , the Geʽez abugida developed under the influence of Christian scripture by adding obligatory vocalic diacritics to

1377-523: 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

1428-401: 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

1479-529: The basic consonants except for ś ( ሠ ), ḫ ( ኀ ) and ḍ (ፀ). It also uses the ones indicated below. It does not use the Geʽez labiovelar letter variants. The Bilen abugida uses the basic consonants except for ś ( ሠ ), ḫ ( ኀ ) and ḍ (ፀ). It also uses the ones indicated below and the Geʽez labiovelar letter variants. The Harari abugida uses the basic consonants except for ś ( ሠ ), ḫ ( ኀ ), ʽ ( ዐ ), p̣ ( ጰ ), ṣ ( ጸ ), and ḍ (ፀ). Although h ( ሀ )

1530-483: The center of gravity of the Kingdom of Aksum and the ensuing integration and Christianization of 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

1581-506: The collapse of the interdental with the alveolar fricatives . On the other hand, emphatic P̣ait ጰ, a Geʻez innovation, is a modification of Ṣädai ጸ, while Psa ፐ is based on Tawe ተ. Thus, there are 24 correspondences of Geʻez and the South Arabian writing system: Many of the letter names are cognate with those of Phoenician , and may thus be assumed for the Proto-Sinaitic script . Two writing systems were used to write

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1632-454: The consonantal letters for Geʽez, Amharic and Tigrinya, punctuation and numerals. Additionally, in Unicode 4.1, there is the supplement range from U+1380 to U+139F (decimal 4992–5023) containing letters for Sebat Bet and tonal marks, and the extended range between U+2D80 and U+2DDF (decimal 11648–11743) containing letters needed for writing Sebat Bet, Meʼen and Bilen . In Unicode 6.0, there

1683-405: The consonantal letters. The diacritics for the vowels, u, i, a, e, ə, o , were fused with the consonants in a recognizable but slightly irregular way, so that the system is laid out as a syllabary. The original form of the consonant was used when the vowel was ä ( / ə / ), the so-called inherent vowel . The resulting forms are shown below in their traditional order. For most consonants there

1734-498: 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 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

1785-574: 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

1836-399: The fifth century. Some letters were modified to create additional consonants for use in languages other than Geʽez. This is typically done by adding a horizontal line at the top of a similar-sounding consonant. The vocalised forms are shown below. Like the other labiovelars, these labiovelars can only be combined with five vowels. The Amharic abugida uses all the basic consonants plus

1887-421: The laws", and the present system of vocalisation is attributed to a team of Aksumite scholars led by Frumentius ( Abba Selama ), the same missionary said to have converted King Ezana to Christianity in the 4th century. It has been argued that the vowel marking pattern of the script reflects a South Asian system such as would have been known by Frumentius. A separate tradition, recorded by Aleqa Taye, holds that

1938-494: The letter "g" facing to the right instead of to the left as in vocalized Geʻez, and a shorter left leg of "l", as in ESA, instead of equally-long legs in vocalized Geʻez (somewhat resembling the Greek letter lambda ). Vocalization of Geʻez occurred in the 4th century, and though the first completely vocalized texts known are inscriptions by Ezana, vocalized letters predate him by some years, as an individual vocalized letter exists in

1989-447: The letters based on ከ come in this order: ከ, ኰ, ኸ, ዀ . In Bilen, the sorting order is slightly different. The alphabetical order is similar to that found in other South Semitic scripts , as well as in the ancient Ugaritic alphabet , which attests both the southern Semitic h-l-ħ-m order and the northern Semitic ʼ–b–g–d ( abugida ) order over three thousand years ago. Geʽez uses an additional alphabetic numeral system comparable to

2040-482: 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

2091-453: The ones indicated below. Note: "V" is used for words of foreign origin except for in some Gurage languages , e.g. cravat 'tie' from French . The consonant symbol "ኸ" is pronounced as "h" in Amharic. For Geʽez, Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, the usual sort order is called halähamä (h–l–ħ–m). Where the labiovelar variants are used, these come immediately after the basic consonant and are followed by other variants. In Tigrinya, for example,

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2142-457: The ones indicated below. Some of the Geʽez labiovelar variants are also used. The Tigrinya abugida has all the basic consonants, the Geʽez labiovelar letter variants, except for ḫʷ ( ኈ ), plus the ones indicated below. A few of the basic consonants are falling into disuse in Eritrea (as they used "ጸ" for "ፀ"). See Tigrinya language#Writing system for details. The Tigre abugida uses

2193-517: The other consonants, these labiovelar ones can be combined with only five different vowels: The Geʽez abugida has been adapted to several modern languages of Eritrea and Ethiopia, frequently requiring additional letters. It has been speculated by some scholars in African studies that the Geʽez script had an influence on the Armenian alphabet after it may have been introduced to Armenia at the end of

2244-492: The pronunciation of Geʻez texts due to the already moribund or extinct status of Geʻez, and that, by that time, the common language of the people were already later the Eritrean and Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages . At least one of Wazeba's coins from the late 3rd or early 4th century contains a vocalized letter, some 30 or so years before Ezana. Kobishchanov, Peter T. Daniels , and others have suggested possible influence from

2295-596: The pronunciation. The Geʽez script was derived from the Ancient South Arabian script which originated in the region centred around what is now Yemen . The earliest inscriptions of Semitic languages in Eritrea date to the 9th century BCE and are known as Epigraphic South Arabian (ESA), an abjad shared with contemporary kingdoms in the Southern part of the Arabian Peninsula . After

2346-599: The rest became part of the Amhara Region under the North Wollo Zone . Amharic language 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

2397-639: 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

2448-505: Was also used in the past to write some Omotic languages , including Wolaytta , Bench , Hamer , and Kafa . For the representation of sounds, this article uses a system that is common (though not universal) among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages . This differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet . See the articles on the individual languages for information on

2499-589: Was probably located in southern Tigray or Angot, however the exact location of this city is currently unknown. Angot is mentioned as being north of Bete Amhara in the medieval period. Angot was on the front line between Abyssinia and the Afar lowlands, and after multiple wars, was occupied by the Oromo tribes of Raya, Wollo and Yejju. In more recent times, it became part of Wollo Province and from 1994 it got split between Amhara and Tigray regions. The northern parts of Angot ( Raya Azebo ) become part of Tigray, and

2550-475: Was spoken by 21.6 million native speakers in Ethiopia. More recent sources state 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

2601-463: Was the Sabalete River located north-east of Lake Ashenge . Under the reign of Degna Djan , during the 10th century, the empire kept expanding south, and sent troops into the modern-day region of Kaffa , while at the same time undertaking missionary activity into Angot. Emperor Dil Na'od is said to have relocated the capital to Ku'bar on the shore of Lake Hayq , south of Angot, and built

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