Amharic

Template:Contains Ethiopic text
**Amharic** (/æmˈhærɪk/ or /ɑːmˈhɑːrɪk/; Amharic: አማርኛ, *Amarəñña*, Template:IPA-am) is an Afroasiatic language of the Semitic branch and is a member of the Ethiosemitic group. It is spoken as a mother tongue by the Amhara and other populations residing in major cities and towns of Ethiopia. The language serves as the official working language of Ethiopia, and is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system. With approximately ~62 million speakers, Amharic is the second-most widely spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic.

Amharic is written left-to-right using the Amharic Fidel (ፊደል), which grew out of the Ge'ez abugida—called, in Ethiopian Semitic languages (ፊደል) *fidel* ("writing system", "letter", or "character") and (አቡጊዳ) *abugida* (from the first four Ethiopic letters, which gave rise to the modern linguistic term abugida).

There is no agreed way of transliterating Amharic into Roman characters. The Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common, though not universal, among linguists specialising in Ethiopian Semitic languages.[*Citation needed*]

## Background

It has been the working language of courts, language of trade and everyday communications, the military, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church since the late 12th century and remains the official language of Ethiopia today. As of the 2007 census, Amharic is spoken by 21.6 million native speakers in Ethiopia and 4 million secondary speakers in Ethiopia. Additionally, 3 million emigrants outside of Ethiopia speak the language.[*Citation needed*] Most of the Ethiopian Jewish communities in Ethiopia and Israel speak Amharic.[*Citation needed*] In Washington DC, Amharic became one of the six non-English languages in the Language Access Act of 2004, which allows government services and education in Amharic. Furthermore, Amharic is considered a holy language by the Rastafari (ራስ ተፈሪ) religion and is widely used among its followers worldwide. It is the most widely spoken language in the Horn of Africa.

## Phonology

The Amharic ejective consonants correspond to the Proto-Semitic "emphatic consonants", usually transcribed with a dot below the letter. The consonant and vowel tables give these symbols in parentheses where they differ from the standard IPA symbols.

**Vowels**

## Writing system

The Amharic script is an abugida, and the graphemes of the Amharic writing system are called *fidel*. 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: Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink, and Template:IPAslink (the last one has *four* distinct letter forms). This is because these *fidel* 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 *fidel*. The Amharic script is included in Unicode, and glyphs are included in fonts available with major operating systems.

### Alphasyllabary

1. ↑ Template:Glottolog
2. ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, *The Linguistics Student's Handbook*, Edinburgh; *Collins English Dictionary* (2003), *Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary* (2010)
3. ↑ Template:OED
4. ↑ Template:MerriamWebsterDictionary
5. ↑ Amharic. Retrieved on 10 August 2013.
6. ↑ Gebremichael, M. (2011). *Federalism and conflict management in Ethiopia: case study of Benishangul-Gumuz Regional State* (PhD). United Kingdom: University of Bradford. hdl:10454/5388.
7. ↑ Amharic alphabet, pronunciation and language.
8. ↑ Amharic translation services | Professional Amharic interpreter.
9. ↑ Meyer, Ronny (2006). "Amharic as lingua franca in Ethiopia". *Lissan: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics*. **20** (1/2): 117–131 – via Academia.edu.
10. ↑ Teferra, Anbessa (2013). "Amharic: Political and social effects on English loan words". In Rosenhouse, Judith; Kowner, Rotem. *Globally Speaking: Motives for Adopting English Vocabulary in Other Languages*. Multilingual Matters. p. 165.
11. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `catalog.ihsn.org`
12. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Lewis`
13. ↑ "Israel's Ethiopian Jews keep ancient language alive in prayer", *Al-Monitor*, 29 June 2017. (in en-us)
14. ↑ Language Access Act Fact Sheet (5 October 2011). Retrieved on 11 October 2016.
15. ↑ http://catalog.ihsn.org/index.php/catalog/3583/download/50086
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Hayward, Katrina; Hayward, Richard J. (1999). "Amharic". *Handbook of the IPA*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 44–50.
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Hudson, Grover. "Amharic". *The World's Major Languages*. 2009. Print. Ed. Comrie, Bernard. Oxon and New York: Routledge. pp. 594–617. ISBN 0-203-30152-8.
Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William, eds. (1996). "Ethiopic Writing". *The World's Writing Systems*. Oxford University Press, Inc. p. 573. ISBN 978-0-19-507993-7.
Principles and Specification for Mnemonic Ethiopic Keyboards. Retrieved on 6 February 2012.