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Ethiopia's population is highly diverse, containing over 80 different ethnic groups. Most people in Ethiopia speak Afro-Asiatic languages, mainly of the Cushitic and Semitic branches. The former includes the Oromo and Somali, and the latter includes the Amhara and Tigray. Together these four groups make up three-quarters of the population.
The culture of Ethiopia is diverse and generally structured along ethnolinguistic lines. The country's Afro-Asiatic-speaking majority adhere to an amalgamation of traditions that were developed independently and through interaction with neighboring and far away civilizations, including other parts of Northeast Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, and Italy.
Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic state with over 80 different ethnic groups. Christianity is the most widely professed faith in the country, with the largest denomination being the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. After Christianity, Ethiopia houses a significant minority of adherents to Islam and a small percentage to traditional faiths.
See also: Demographics of Ethiopia, Culture of Ethiopia, List of ethnic groups in Ethiopia. Many ethnic groups native to Ethiopia are also native to Eritrea, and to a lesser extent in Sudan, Kenya, and Somalia; see those categories for missing groups.
1996 map of the major ethnolinguistic groups of Africa, by the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division (substantially based on G.P. Murdock, Africa, its peoples and their cultural history, 1959). Colour-coded are 15 major ethnolinguistic super-groups, as follows: Afroasiatic
The Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Day is celebrated on 8 December coinciding the adoption of the 1994 Constitutional Assembly.Since 2006, the holiday is celebrated, adorned by festivals participating the country's eighty ethnic groups gathering in every cities and dancing with their music and traditional attire to demonstrate unity and diversity.
The culture of the Gedeo is distinguished by two features. The first is the baalle , a tradition of ranks and age classes similar to the Gadaa system of the Oromo people . Beckingham and Huntingford describe the system as seven grades that span a 10-year period of birth, creating a 70-year cycle. [ 2 ]
Ethiopia is a federation subdivided into ethno-linguistically based regional states (Amharic: plural: ክልሎች kililoch; singular: ክልል kilil; Oromo: singular: Naannoo; plural: Naannolee) and chartered cities (Amharic: plural: አስተዳደር አካባቢዎች astedader akababiwoch; singular: አስተዳደር አካባቢ astedader akabibi).