Which language is widely spoken in Ethiopia?
AmharicAmharic is the government's official language and a widely used lingua franca, but as of 2007, only 29% of the population reported speaking Amharic as their main language. Oromo is spoken by over a third of the population as their main language and is the most widely spoken primary language in Ethiopia.
Does Ethiopian speak English?
Ethiopia's 78.25 million residents collectively speak up to 90 languages, and English is only spoken by 0.22% of them (171,712 people).
How many official languages does Ethiopia have?
five official languagesAlthough now it is only one of the five official languages of Ethiopia, together with Oromo, Somali, Afar, and Tigrinya - until 2020 Amharic was the only Ethiopian working language of the federal government.
Does Ethiopia speak French?
As a result, it has retained its own indigenous languages rather than importing a European language, like Portuguese or French, as the official language. Today, about 88 languages are spoken in Ethiopia, with about 77 being local languages.
Is Ethiopia rich or poor?
With about 115 million people (2020), Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa after Nigeria, and still the fastest growing economy in the region, with 6.3 percent growth in FY2020/21. However, it is also one of the poorest, with a per capita gross national income of $890.
What religion is in Ethiopia?
More than two-fifths of Ethiopians follow the teachings of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. An additional one-fifth adhere to other Christian faiths, the vast majority of which are Protestant.
Does Ethiopia speak Italian?
There are at least some Italian speakers, or at least people who understand the language, in Africa. They are found primarily in the former colonies of Italian Libya (now just Libya) and Italian East Africa (now part of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia).
Is Amharic similar to Arabic?
Arabic is in the Afroasiatic language family, specifically the Semitic branch. This is the very same branch that Hebrew, Amharic, Aramaic, Maltese, and many other languages with historic and literary weight are part of.
Who speaks Swahili?
With its origin in East Africa, Swahili speakers spread over more than 14 countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Comoros, and as far as Oman and Yemen in the Middle East.
Is Amharic hard to learn?
How difficult is it to learn Amharic? Amharic is considered to be a Category III language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English.
How do you say I love you to a girl in Amharic?
0:001:00Different ways to say 'I LOVE YOU' in Amharic - #shorts - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipAh. You can only say this if you're in love with the person to a male you say affected one means iMoreAh. You can only say this if you're in love with the person to a male you say affected one means i love you it can also mean i like you to a female.
What language do Eritreans speak?
TigrinyaTigrinya is spoken by about 7 million people around the world. It is a widely spoken language in Eritrea and in the northern part of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it is a working language in offices along with Arabic.
What is the language of Ethiopia?
Besides, the Nilotic peoples who are a minority ethnic group in Ethiopia speak Nilo-Saharan languages.
How many languages does Ethiopia speak?
Ethiopia has more than 80 languages spoken within the country and they include official languages, foreign languages, and other native languages. Oromo and Amharic are the two principal languages spoken in the country.
What is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia?
In Ethiopia, English which is the medium of instruction in universities and secondary schools is the most widely spoken of the foreign languages. Initially, Amharic was the medium of instructions in primary schools, but that changed in many regions within the country and has so far been replaced by other local languages such as Tigrinya and Oromo.
What languages are endangered in Ethiopia?
The Endangered Languages Of Ethiopia. Languages, such as Mesmes, Gafat, and Weyto are victims of language death. Many of the languages have not been spoken in two generations making them prone to extinction. The Ongota language is the next in line at the brink of extinction.
How Many Languages Does Ethiopia Have?
In Ethiopia language is a fascinating topic. It’s one I’ve been exploring in detail recently, so writing about my findings seemed like a good way to share my linguistic journey. Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa.
Ethiopia Language Family Trees
Africa's second largest country by population, Ethiopia is home to some fascinating linguistic diversity. Broadly speaking, languages in Ethiopia can be classified within four major language groups, though the country is also home to several unclassified tongues.
Which Is the Most Spoken Ethiopian Language?
Ethiopia is home to five official languages: Afar, Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya. The country also has several local sign languages.
Mapping Languages in Ethiopia – What Is Spoken Where?
In linguistic terms, Ethiopian maps show clear regional distinctions. Somali, for example, is spoken mostly in the east and southeast of the country, while Oromo speakers stretch from the western border into central Ethiopia and down to the south.
What Can We Learn from Studying the Language of Ethiopia?
We can learn an incredible amount from studying the language of Ethiopia, not just about the languages themselves but about the cultures of those who speak them.
Summary
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sharing my insights into languages in Ethiopia in this article, so I hope you’ve found them interesting. To recap, we’ve looked at Ethiopian language from the perspective of the country’s five official languages, explored a number of different languages and looked at which are spoken where within the country.
What is the main language of Ethiopia?
Amharic is also the official Ethiopian language and also the main language of the Amhara region. Amharic is also the most spoken language in Addis Ababa, the capital city of the country. Amharic is the only language spoken across the country as well as the most spoken as a second language.
How many languages are spoken in Ethiopia?
The diversity of the country’s inhabitants means that many languages are spoken. There are almost 90 languages in use throughout Ethiopia, most of which belong to the Afroasiatic family of languages (Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic) or Nilo-Saharan family (Nilotic).
What is gurage in Ethiopia?
Gurage (2%) — A dialect-continuum language belonging to the Ethiosemitic-South Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is spoken in the Gurage Zone which is part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region in south west of Ethiopia.
What is the language of Sidamo?
Sidamo (2%) — An Afro-Asiatic language, from the Highland East Cushitic branch of the Cushitic family. The language is spoken in the southern part of Ethiopia by the Sidama people. Sidam has recently regained autonomy and become the 10th region of Ethiopia. Wolaytta (2%) — North Omotic language of the Welayta people of Ethiopia.
What languages do people speak in Ethiopia?
Most people living in the northern and central parts of Ethiopia speak Semitic languages including Tigrinya, Amharic, Gurage, Geʿez, and Hareri. Geʿez is the ancient language of the Aksumite empire and is primarily used in religious texts. Ge’ez is also the predecessor of the Semitic languages in Ethiopia.
Where is Afan Oromo spoken?
It is primarily spoken in the central and southern parts of Ethiopia and the working language of the Oromia region. It is the first language of the Oromo people.
What is the Ethiopian alphabet?
In terms of writing systems, Ethiopia’s primary orthography is the Ge’ez script which is also known as the Ethiopian or Amharic alphabet. It has been in use since the fifth century BC and is currently used as a writing system for several local languages. Ge’ez is also a common liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches.
Language Geography
Amharic is the statutory national language of Ethiopia. While it has been recognized as the official language since the 14th century, it became statutory in 1994 when it was added to Ethiopia’s constitution.
Written Amharic
The earliest Amharic texts were written in 14th century. Amharic is written in Ge’ez, or Ethiopic script.
What is the official language of Ethiopia?
Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. Amharic (also known as Amarinya, Amarigna) is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. Amharic is rooted from the Ancient language Geez (Ge'ez).
What is the most common language spoken in Ethiopia?
Amharic has four dialectical variations spoken little different from the popular Amharic dialect. (Gojam, Gonder, Wollo, and Menz dialects). According to the 1994 census Amharic is the most commonly spoken language in Ethiopia. It is a native language for over 27 million people in Ethiopia.
What is the Amharic writing system?
Modern Amharic has inherited its system of writing by way of the language of the old kingdom of Axum, Geez, which is still the classical and ecclesiastical language of Ethiopia.
How many characters are there in Amharic?
Amharic has its own writing system, a semi-syllabic system. It possesses 33 primary characters, each representing a consonant and each having 7 variations in form to indicate the vowel which follows the consonant.
How many people speak Amharic?
It is estimated that Amharic is the language of some 2.7 million emigrants outside Ethiopia. More than 62 million people can speak Amharic globally.
When did Geez stop being spoken?
Although Geez is ceased to be spoken popularly sometime between 900 and 1200 AD, it continues as a language of Ethiopian Church. Since the 13th century Amharic has been the language of the court and the population in Highlands of Ethiopia. Amharic is the second-most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic.
Is Amharic a semitic language?
The roots, then, of Amharic orthography; like those of the language itself, are Semitic. Both Geez and the related languages of Ethiopia are written and read from left to right, in contrast to the other Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew. Amharic has its own writing system, a semi-syllabic system. It possesses 33 primary characters, each ...
How many languages are spoken in Ethiopia?
There are 86 individual languages indigenous to Ethiopia according to Ethnologue, with the 1994 Ethiopian census indicating that some 77 tongues were spoken locally.
Is Amharic similar to Arabic?
Amharic is a Semitic language, like Arabic, and it has a similar structure of consonantal roots, with prefixes, suffixes, and inserted vowels that create the meaning. But other than this basic structure it is not even close to be mutually intelligible.
Who speaks Amharic?
Amharic is an official language spoken in Ethiopia, but it is also found in Egypt and Eritrea, as well as in Israel, Sweden, Canada and the United States. The name Amharic (ኣማርኛ – amarəñña) is taken from the Amhara district (አማራ), in northern Ethiopia, which is believed to be the birthplace of the language.
Do they speak Swahili in Ethiopia?
Amharic is the second most widely spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic. It has 25 million speakers, mostly in Ethiopia. Swahili is an official language of people living in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and which is also widely spoken in the Eastern Africa region.
What race is Ethiopian?
The Oromo, Amhara, Somali and Tigrayans make up more than three-quarters (75%) of the population, but there are more than 80 different ethnic groups within Ethiopia. Some of these have as few as 10,000 members.
Is Arabic older than Amharic?
It is the official and working language of Ethiopia. Amharic is one of the Southern Semitic languages spoken in Ethiopia alongside Argoba, Tigrinya, Tigre, Geez, Guragenya, Siltee etc.. which are considered much older than the Northern Semitic languages such as Hebrew & Arabic, according to recent research findings.
What religion is Ethiopia?
Religion in Ethiopia consists of a number of faiths. Among these mainly Abrahamic religions, the most numerous is Christianity ( Ethiopian Orthodoxy, Pentay, Roman Catholic) totaling at 62.8%, followed by Islam at 33.9%. There is also a longstanding but small Jewish community.
What is the official language of Ethiopia?
Amharic has been the official working language of Ethiopia, language of the courts, the language of trade and everyday communications and of the military since the late 12th century. It is one of the official languages of Ethiopia, together with Oromo, Somali, Afar, and Tigrinya.
Why did the Amharic language originate?
The Amharic language possibly originated as result of a pidginization process with a Cushitic substratum and a Semitic superstratum to enable communication between people who spoke a mix of different languages. Amharic has been the official working language of Ethiopia, language of the courts, the language of trade and everyday communications ...
What is the Amharic alphabet?
Amharic is written left-to-right using a system that grew out of the Geʽez script. The writing system is called fidäl ( ፊደል) in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Fidäl means "script", "alphabet", "letter", or "character".
What is the meaning of "wänd" in Amharic?
Amharic has special words that can be used to indicate the gender of people and animals. For people, wänd is used for masculinity and set for femininity, e.g. wänd lǝǧ 'boy', set lǝǧ 'girl'; wänd hakim 'physician, doctor (m.)', set hakim 'physician, doctor (f.)'.
What is the Amharic script?
The Amharic script is included in Unicode, and glyphs are included in fonts available with major operating systems. A modern usage of Amharic: the label of a Coca-Cola bottle. The script reads ኮካ-ኮላ ( koka-kola ).
How does Amharic derive nouns?
Amharic has various ways to derive nouns from other words or other nouns. One way of nominalising consists of a form of vowel agreement (similar vowels on similar places) inside the three-radical structures typical of Semitic languages. For example:
What is an adjective in Amharic?
Adjectives. Adjectives are words or constructions used to qualify nouns. Adjectives in Amharic can be formed in several ways: they can be based on nominal patterns, or derived from nouns, verbs and other parts of speech. Adjectives can be nominalized by way of suffixing the nominal article (see Nouns above).
How many languages are spoken in Ethiopia?
With Ethiopia being an ethnically diverse country, there are more than 80 Ethiopia languages used by the different cultural and religious groups of each language from the different linguistic families.
What language is Cushitic Ethiopia?
The Cushitic group are located on the southwestern and eastern parts of the country and are grouped into several classifications. They are known as Agew languages, East Cushitic, Lowland East Cushitic, Southern lowland East Cushitic, and transversal southern East Cushitic.
What is the only language used as a medium of instruction?
The only language used as a medium of instruction is Amharic and it kept spreading throughout all of the regions. With request of some Ethiopian regions with large number of populations, other Ethiopia languages are also considered to be a working language as well.
Where is omotic spoken?
Omotic is only found in Ethiopia and Cushitic is spoken in Ethiopia and neighbouring countries. Most of the Semitic languages are spoken in Ethiopia and few of them in Middle East and some parts of Africa.
What are some examples of semitic languages?
Some of the known North Semitic languages include Tigrinya and Ge’ez, and in the south Semitic group Amharic, Harari, Argoba, East and West Gurage language group clusters, Silte are a few examples. Semitic Languages that are spoken in Ethiopia are classified into North Ethio-Semetic and South Ethio-Semetic.
What are the features of Ethiopia?
Some don’t match with any of the described features again, but generally, most of the languages relate to Ethiopia’s boundaries and have the features of pronunciation, grammar, vocabularies, and patterns of expression . Ethiopia constitutes a language that is rich with features of pronunciation; that have retroflex consonants, nasal vowel, ...
What is the basic tradition of every nation that serves as a communicative tool or skill and it all starts from
Language is the basic tradition of every nation that serves as a communicative tool or skill and it all starts from a word. Ethiopia becoming one of the ancient nations has developed a great deal on the subject field and the linguistics structure. With all the difficulty to limit the insight of the topic it is essential to fall under ...
A Brief Overview of The Languages Spoken in Ethiopia
The Most Widely Spoken Languages of Ethiopia
- According to the Ethiopian census of 2007, the first languages and the largest are the Oromo with about 24,930,424 of the population speaking the language which is equivalent to 33.8% and the Amharic with 21,634,396 users which is equivalent to 29.3% of the country’s population. Other widely spoken languages in Ethiopia include Somali with 4,609,27...
The Endangered Languages of Ethiopia
- Languages, such as Mesmes, Gafat, and Weyto are victims of language death. Many of the languages have not been spoken in two generations making them prone to extinction. The Ongota language is the next in line at the brink of extinction. Language death is attributed to complex factors which are not as easy to determine or predict. Therefore, it is almost impossible to pinpo…
Conservation of Ethiopian Languages
- Following the fall of the Derg in 1991, the Ethiopian Constitution of 1995 allowed all ethnic groups within the country the right to establish first language primary education systems and develop their various languages. The decision marked a change to language policies put in place by the country's previous governments. The Ge'ez script is the principal orthography used in Ethiopia in …
Languages of Ethiopia
Official Languages of Ethiopia
- The Ethiopian constitution states that all languages in Ethiopia are recognised by the state. However, Amharic and Afan Oromo are the languages most often used by the federal government, as they are the most common. Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia and the primary language of the federal government of Ethiopia.
Language Distribution
- Most people living in the northern and central parts of Ethiopia speak Semitic languages including Tigrinya, Amharic, Gurage, Geʿez, and Hareri. Geʿez is the ancient language of the Aksumite empire and is primarily used in religious texts. Ge’ez is also the predecessor of the Semitic languages in Ethiopia. Tigrinya is particularly common in the northeastern part of the country, w…
Writing Alphabet
- In terms of writing systems, Ethiopia’s primary orthography is the Ge’ez script which is also known as the Ethiopian or Amharic alphabet. It has been in use since the fifth century BC and is currently used as a writing system for several local languages. Ge’ez is also a common liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches. There are several other writing syst…
Conservation of Languages in Ethiopia
- Over the years, several Ethiopian languages have become extinct, including Mesmes, Gafat, and Weyto. Some languages are at risk of extinction as they are only spoken by a very small number of people. Linguistic experts believe that any language with less than 10,000 speakers is at risk of extinction. The Ethiopian Constitution of 1995 gives all ethnic groups in Ethiopia the right to esta…