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40-492: A kebero ( Amharic and Tigrinya : ከበሮ ) is a double-headed, conical hand drum used in the traditional music of Eritrea , Sudan and Ethiopia . A piece of animal hide is stretched over each end of the instrument, thus forming a membranophone . A large version of the kebero is also used in Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christian liturgical music , while smaller versions are used in secular celebrations. The kebero

80-466: 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

120-524: 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

160-407: A 68% lexical similarity to Geʽez, followed by Amharic at 62%. Most linguists believe that Geʽez does not constitute a common ancestor of modern Ethio-Semitic languages but became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested common language. Historically, /ɨ/ has a basic correspondence with Proto-Semitic short *i and *u , /æ ~ ɐ/ with short *a ,

200-531: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Amharic 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

240-751: 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

280-579: 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

320-663: 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

360-501: 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

400-456: Is even a tendency for nouns to follow the gender of the noun with a corresponding meaning in Greek. There are two numbers, singular and plural. The plural can be constructed either by suffixing ኣት -āt to a word (regardless of gender, but often ኣን -ān if it is a male human noun), or by using an internal plural . Nouns also have two cases: the nominative, which is not marked, and

440-564: 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%27ez language Today, Geʽez is used as the main liturgical language of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church ,

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480-486: Is lost when a plural noun with a consonant-final stem has a pronoun suffix attached (generally replaced by the added -i- , as in -i-hu , "his"), thereby losing the case/state distinction, but the distinction may be retained in the case of consonant-final singular nouns. Furthermore, suffix pronouns may or may not attract stress to themselves. In the following table, pronouns without a stress mark (an acute) are not stressed, and vowel-initial suffixes have also been given

520-469: 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

560-416: 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

600-481: Is primarily used in weddings, funerals and other ceremonies. The instrument is made from the hollowed out section of a tree trunk and then hard particles are inserted into it. The shell is then covered with two cow leather membranes, so that one can be tuned higher than the other. A kebero is also used in a worship called wereb. It is mostly done in Eritrea and Ethiopia. This article relating to membranophones

640-433: Is pronounced exactly the same as ḥ in the traditional pronunciation. Though the use of a different letter shows that it must originally have had some other pronunciation, what that pronunciation was is not certain. The chart below lists /ɬ/ and /t͡ɬʼ/ as possible values for ś ( ሠ ) and ḍ ( ፀ ) respectively. It also lists /χ/ as a possible value for ḫ ( ኀ ). These values are tentative, but based on

680-582: 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

720-400: Is stressed on the ultima (e.g. ንግር nəgə́r , "speak!"), and that, in some patterns, words can be stressed on the third-, fourth- or even fifth-to-last syllable (e.g. በረከተ bárakata ). Due to the high predictability of stress location in most words, textbooks, dictionaries and grammars generally do not mark it. Minimal pairs do exist, however, such as yənaggərā́ ("he speaks to her", with

760-635: The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church , Ethiopian Catholic Church , Eritrean Catholic Church , and the Beta Israel Jewish community. Hawulti Obelisk is an ancient pre-Aksumite Obelisk located in Matara , Eritrea. The monument dates to the early Aksumite period and bears an example of the ancient Geʽez script. In one study, Tigre was found to have a 71% lexical similarity to Ge'ez, while Tigrinya had

800-534: 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,

840-426: The se letter used for spelling the word nigūś "king") is reconstructed as descended from a Proto-Semitic voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ] . Like Arabic, Geʽez merged Proto-Semitic š and s in ሰ (also called se-isat : the se letter used for spelling the word isāt "fire"). Apart from this, Geʽez phonology is comparably conservative; the only other Proto-Semitic phonological contrasts lost may be

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880-504: 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

920-469: 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

960-523: 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

1000-487: The accusative, which is marked with final -a . As in other Semitic languages, there are at least two "states", absolute (unmarked) and construct (marked with -a as well). As in Classical/Standard Arabic , singular and plural nouns often take the same final inflectional affixes for case and state, as number morphology is achieved via attaching a suffix to the stem and/or an internal change in

1040-449: 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

1080-537: 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

1120-483: The contrast here represented as a/ā is represented as ä/a. Geʽez is transliterated according to the following system (see the phoneme table below for IPA values): Because Geʽez is no longer spoken in daily life by large communities, the early pronunciation of some consonants is not completely certain. Gragg writes that "[t]he consonants corresponding to the graphemes ś (Geʽez ሠ ) and ḍ (Geʽez ፀ ) have merged with ሰ and ጸ respectively in

1160-498: 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

1200-574: 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

1240-442: The following patterns. Quadriconsonantal and some triconsonantal nouns follow the following pattern. Triconsonantal nouns that take this pattern must have at least one "long" vowel (namely /i e o u/ ). In the independent pronouns, gender is not distinguished in the 1st person, and case is only distinguished in the 3rd person singular. Suffix pronouns attach at the end of a noun, preposition or verb. The accusative/construct -a

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1280-420: The interdental fricatives and ghayn . There is no evidence within the script of stress rules in the ancient period, but stress patterns exist within the liturgical tradition(s). Accounts of these patterns are, however, contradictory. One early 20th-century account may be broadly summarized as follows: As one example of a discrepancy, a different late 19th-century account says the masculine singular imperative

1320-482: 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

1360-496: The phonological system represented by the traditional pronunciation—and indeed in all modern Ethiopian Semitic. ... There is, however, no evidence either in the tradition or in Ethiopian Semitic [for] what value these consonants may have had in Geʽ;ez." A similar problem is found for the consonant transliterated ḫ . Gragg notes that it corresponds in etymology to velar or uvular fricatives in other Semitic languages, but it

1400-447: The pronoun suffix -(h)ā́ "her") vs. yənaggə́rā ("they speak", feminine plural), both written ይነግራ . Geʽez distinguishes two genders, masculine and feminine, the latter of which is sometimes marked with the suffix ት -t , e.g. እኅት ʼəxt ("sister"). These are less strongly distinguished than in other Semitic languages, as many nouns not denoting humans can be used in either gender: in translated Christian texts there

1440-735: The reconstructed Proto-Semitic consonants that they are descended from. The following table presents the consonants of the Geʽez language. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by its representation in the Geʽez script and scholarly transliteration. Geʽez consonants have a triple opposition between voiceless, voiced, and ejective (or emphatic ) obstruents. The Proto-Semitic "emphasis" in Geʽez has been generalized to include emphatic p̣ /pʼ/ . Geʽez has phonologized labiovelars , descending from Proto-Semitic biphonemes. Geʽez ś ሠ Sawt (in Amharic, also called śe-nigūś , i.e.

1480-639: 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

1520-705: The stem. There is some morphological interaction between consonant-final nouns and a pronoun suffix (see the table of suffix pronouns below). For example, when followed by የ -ya ("my"), in both nominative and accusative the resulting form is ሊቅየ liqə́ya (i.e. the accusative is not * ሊቀየ *liqáya ), but with ከ -ka ("your", masculine singular) there's a distinction between nominative ሊቅከ liqə́ka and accusative ሊቀከ liqáka , and similarly with -hu ("his") between nominative ሊቁ liqú (< *liq-ə-hu ) and accusative ሊቆ liqó (< *liqa-hu ). Internal plurals follow certain patterns. Triconsonantal nouns follow one of

1560-555: The vowels /i, u, a/ with Proto-Semitic long *ī, *ū, *ā respectively, and /e, o/ with the Proto-Semitic diphthongs *ay and *aw . In Geʽez there still exist many alternations between /o/ and /aw/ , less so between /e/ and /aj/ , e.g. ተሎኩ taloku ~ ተለውኩ talawku ("I followed"). In the transcription employed by the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica , which is widely employed in academia,

1600-475: 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

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