Misplaced Pages

#904095

34-583: Debre Libanos ( Amharic : ደብረ ሊባኖስ) is an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo monastery , lying northwest of Addis Ababa in the North Shewa Zone of the Oromia Region . It was founded in 1284 by Saint Tekle Haymanot as Debre Atsbo and was renamed as Debre Libanos in the 15th century. He meditated in a cave above the current monastery for 29 years. The monastery's chief abbot, called the Ichege ,

68-523: 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

102-524: 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

136-751: 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

170-817: 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 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

204-579: 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

238-663: 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

272-501: 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

306-473: 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 List of governors-general of Italian East Africa This article lists the governors-general of Italian East Africa ,

340-469: 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

374-416: 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

SECTION 10

#1732772147905

408-442: Is the object of pilgrimages . Tekle Haymanot left his homeland of Shewa for Debre Damo prior to the monastery's founding. On his return, he introduced the spirit of renewal that Christianity was experiencing in the northern provinces. He settled in the central area between Selale and Grarya, where he founded in 1284 the monastery of Debre Atsbo, which would be renamed in the 15th century to Debre Libanos. It then became one of

442-534: 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,

476-504: 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

510-469: 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

544-523: 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

578-522: The Ichege lived at Gondar while the capital was in that city. The Ichege followed the capital when it moved to Debre Tabor , Mekele and ultimately Addis Ababa . Emperor Haile Selassie 's interest in Debre Libanos dates to when he was governor of the district of Selale . The Emperor notes in his autobiography that during the reconstruction of the church at Debre Libanos, an inscribed gold ring

612-804: The Tweed collection. Subsequent to her research and that of Getatchew Haile and Ted Erho, the School of Divinity recognised in 2012 that Tweed MS150 had been microfilmed as part of a UNESCO project in 1976 when it was in Debre Libanos. Arrangements for the return were put in train and in 2016 a contingent from the School of Divinity travelled with the manuscript to Ethiopia, the official handover ceremony taking place on 11 January. 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] )

646-449: 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

680-537: 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

714-528: The church over Tekle Haymanot's tomb, which Emperor Haile Selassie ordered constructed in 1961; a slightly older Church of the Cross, where Buxton was told a fragment of the True Cross is preserved; and five religious schools. The cave where the saint lived is in the nearby cliffs, which one travel guide describes as a five-minute walk away. This cave contains a spring, whose water is considered holy and

SECTION 20

#1732772147905

748-498: 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

782-574: 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

816-481: The inhabitants of this monastery . On 21 May of that year, 297 monks and 23 laymen were killed. Overall, between 1,700 and 2,100 civilians were slaughtered in two mass executions on 21 May and 26 May. While the massacre of Addis Ababa in February 1937 had a spontaneous character about it, the massacre of Debre Libanos planned meticulously by Graziani himself after he had recovered from his wounds. The date chosen for

850-538: The invasion of Ahmad Gragn when one of his followers, Ura'i Abu Bakr, set it on fire 21 July 1531, despite the attempts of its community to ransom the church. Although the Ichege intervened to protect the Gambo people during the reign of Sarsa Dengel , the buildings were not completely rebuilt until after the visit of Emperor Iyasu the Great in 1699. In the reign of Emperor Fasilides , after invading Oromos had ravaged

884-420: The massacre, 20 May (12 Ginbot), marked the annual celebration of the transfer of St Tekelehaimanot (the saint for the monastery was constructed) to the shrine. When Buxton visited Debre Libanos in the mid-1940s, he found the remains of these victims were plainly visible ("Here were innumerable bones and skulls – bones in bags and bones in boxes, bones lying in confused heaps, awaiting burial"). A cross-shaped tomb

918-618: The monastery's lands in Shewa the Emperor granted the Ichege his palace at Azazo, where the various Ichege lived. From the 17th century until the matter was resolved in a synod convened by Emperor Yohannes II , the Ichege and the monks of Debre Libanos were the most important supporters of the Sost Lidet doctrine, in opposition to the House of Ewostatewos . Beginning in the mid-17th century,

952-667: The most important religious institutions of Ethiopia, not only founding a number of daughter houses, but its abbot became one of the principal leaders of the Ethiopian Church, called the Echege , second only to the Abuna . Margary Perham describes the position as comparable to a Vicar-General . The Sebate was administrator of Debre Libanos and deputy to the Ichege Debre Libanos suffered great destruction during

986-482: 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

1020-639: 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

1054-744: Was afterwards built to contain their remains, standing next to the parking lot. Mosaics on the exterior front facade and stained-glass windows for the monastery were made and exhibited in London at the Festival Hall by E.O. Hevezi and G.J. Bajo . André Tweed (1914 – 1993) collected a significant number of Ethiopian manuscripts which he gifted to Howard University shortly before his death. In 2005 and 2006, Gay Byron (1961-2023), then Baptist Missionary Training School Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School , travelled to Washington, D.C. to examine

Debre Libanos - Misplaced Pages Continue

1088-459: Was found in the excavations, which he personally delivered to then Emperor Menelik II . The reconstructed church was designed by Professor Hector Corfiato . Following the attempted assassination on his life on 19 February 1937, Governor-General Rodolfo Graziani believed the monastery's monks and novices were involved in this attack, and unwilling to wait for the results of the official investigation, ordered Italian colonialists to massacre

1122-475: 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

1156-599: Was the second most powerful official in the Ethiopian Church after the Abuna . The monastery complex sits on a terrace between a cliff and the gorge of one of the tributaries of the Abbay River (the Blue Nile ). None of the original buildings of Debre Libanos survive, although David Buxton suspected "there are interesting things still to be found among the neighbouring cliffs". Current buildings include

#904095