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There are multiple ways to write some letters in Amharic as some of the sounds that were once used in Geʽez are non-existent in modern Amharic. At the cost of redundancy, Amharic speakers retain the archaic letters in their orthography to preserve the Geʽez origins of many of their words. Also, the English approximations are sometimes very ...
Geʽez (/ ˈ ɡ iː ɛ z / GEE-ez; [4] Ge'ez: ግዕዝ, romanized: Gəʽəz, IPA: [ˈɡɨʕɨz] ⓘ) is a script used as an abugida (alphasyllabary) for several Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Amharic is a pro-drop language: neutral sentences in which no element is emphasized normally omit independent pronouns: ኢትዮጵያዊ ነው ʾityop̣p̣yawi näw 'he's Ethiopian', ጋበዝኳት gabbäzkwat 'I invited her'. The Amharic words that translate he, I, and her do not appear in these sentences as independent words. However, in ...
Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by regional languages such as Oromo, Somali or Tigrinya. [16] While all languages enjoy equal state recognition in the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia [ 17 ] and Oromo is the most populous language by native speakers, Amharic is the most populous by number ...
Geʽez ś ሠ Sawt (in Amharic, also called śe-nigūś, i.e. 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").
With 57,500,000 total speakers as of 2019, including around 25,100,000 second language speakers, Amharic is the most widely spoken of the group, the most widely spoken language of Ethiopia and second-most widely spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic. [3] [4] Tigrinya has 7 million speakers and is the most widely spoken language in ...
Amharic has been the dominant language of Ethiopia since the late 12th century, as language of the courts, the language of trade and everyday communications and of the military. It was the sole official language at the national level until 2020, and is currently the working language of Ethiopia, sharing official language status with Oromo ...
Additionally, it is common in Afroasiatic languages for the present/imperfective form to be a derived (marked) form of the verb, whereas in most other languages and language families the present tense is the default form of the verb. [180] Another common trait across the family is the use of a suppletive imperative for verbs of motion. [181]