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Amharic language



 
 
Amharic (???? amar?ñña) is a Semitic language
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
 spoken in North Central Ethiopia
Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
 by the Amhara
Amhara people

Amhara is an ethnic group in the central highlands of Ethiopia. Numbering about 19.8 million people, it comprises 26 percent of the country's population, according to the most recent census ....
. It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system, including the Amhara Region
Amhara Region

Amhara is one of the nine Regions of Ethiopia of Ethiopia, containing the homeland of the Amhara people. Previously known as Region 3, its capital is Bahir Dar....
 and the multi-ethnic Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region
Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region is one of the nine Regions of Ethiopia of Ethiopia. It comprises the former Regions 7-11....
, among others.






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Amharic (???? amar?ñña) is a Semitic language
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
 spoken in North Central Ethiopia
Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
 by the Amhara
Amhara people

Amhara is an ethnic group in the central highlands of Ethiopia. Numbering about 19.8 million people, it comprises 26 percent of the country's population, according to the most recent census ....
. It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system, including the Amhara Region
Amhara Region

Amhara is one of the nine Regions of Ethiopia of Ethiopia, containing the homeland of the Amhara people. Previously known as Region 3, its capital is Bahir Dar....
 and the multi-ethnic Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region
Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region is one of the nine Regions of Ethiopia of Ethiopia. It comprises the former Regions 7-11....
, among others. It has been the working language of government, the military, and of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is an Oriental Orthodoxy church in Ethiopia that was part of the Coptic Christianity until 1959, when it was granted its own Patriarch by List of Coptic Popes, Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria....
 throughout modern times. Outside Ethiopia, Amharic is the language of some 2.7 million emigrants (notably in Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
, Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
, and Sweden
Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
).

It is written, with some adaptations, with the Ge'ez abugida (first used for the language of the same name
Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court....
)—called, in Ethiopian Semitic languages
Ethiopian Semitic languages

Ethiopian Semitic is a language group, which together with Old South Arabian, forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. Today, the name Ethiopian can be considered a misnomer, as the North languages are also found in Eritrea, with two of them being exclusively used there; however, the term came into use before Eritrea had...
, ??? fidel ("alphabet", "letter," or "character") and ???? abugida (from the first four Ethiopic letters in Greek order, also giving rise to the modern linguistic term abugida
Abugida

An 'abugida' is a segment writing system which is based on consonants but in which vowel notation is obligatory. About half the writing systems in the world are abugidas, including the extensive Brahmic family of scripts used in South and Southeast Asia....
). Due to economic, political and some natural causes, the Amharic language has also been influenced by neighboring languages like Afaan Oromo, while some Afaan Oromo words - like gosa,buna,baqila,dinnicha - have integrated into Amharic vocabulary over time.

Sounds and orthography


Consonant and vowel phonemes

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 specializing in Ethiopian Semitic languages. The Amharic ejectives correspond to the Proto-Semitic "emphatic consonants", usually transcribed with a dot
Dot (diacritic)

When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the Interpunct , or to the glyphs 'combining dot above' and 'combining dot below' which may be combined with some Letter s of the extended Latin alphabets in use in Central European languages and Vietnamese language....
 below the letter. The consonant and vowel charts give these symbols in parentheses where they differ from the standard IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
 symbols.

Consonants
BilabialDentalPalato-alveolar
Palatal
VelarGlottal
PlosivesVoiceless 
Voiced  
Ejective  
AffricatesVoiceless    
Voiced    
Ejective   
FricativesVoiceless 
Voiced   
Nasals  
Liquids  
Flap/Trill    


Vowels
FrontCentralBack
High
Mid
Low  



Fidel signs


The following chart represents the basic forms of the consonants, ignoring the so-called "bastard" (Amh. ??? ) labiovelarized forms of each consonant (represented by the addition of a superscripted "w," i.e. ) and not including the wholly labiovelarized consonants (Ge'ez
Ge'ez alphabet

Ge'ez , also called Ethiopic, is an abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez language, a Semitic languages. In communities that use it, such as the Amharic language and Tigrinya language, the script is called , which means "script" or "alphabet"....
 ), , and . Some phonemes can be represented by more than one series of symbols: , /s'/, and (the last has four distinct letter forms). The citation form for each series is the consonant+/ä/ form, i.e. the first column of fidel. You will need a font that supports Ethiopic, such as [ftp://ftp.ethiopic.org/pub/fonts/TrueType/gfzemenu.ttf GF Zemen Unicode], in order to view the fidel.

Non-speakers are often disconcerted or astonished by the remarkable similarity of many of the symbols. This is mitigated somewhat because, like many Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
, Amharic uses triconsonantal root
Triliteral

The root of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" . Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the derivation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants which go with a particular morphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate...
s in its verb morphology. The result of this is that a fluent speaker of Amharic can often decipher written text by observing the consonants, with the vowel variants being supplemental detail.

Chart of Amharic fidels
äuiaeo
h???????
l???????
h???????
m???????
s???????
r???????
s???????
š???????
q???????
b???????
t???????
???????
h???????
n???????
ñ???????
???????
k???????
h???????
w???????
???????
z???????
???????
y???????
d???????
???????
g???????
t???????
c???????
p???????
s???????
s???????
f???????
p???????


Gemination

As in most other Ethiopian Semitic languages
Ethiopian Semitic languages

Ethiopian Semitic is a language group, which together with Old South Arabian, forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. Today, the name Ethiopian can be considered a misnomer, as the North languages are also found in Eritrea, with two of them being exclusively used there; however, the term came into use before Eritrea had...
, gemination
Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant.Consonant length is distinctive in some languages, for instance Arabic language, Estonian language, Finnish language, Russian language, Hebrew language, Hungarian language, Italian language, Japanese language, L...
 is contrastive
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
 in Amharic. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another; for example, alä 'he said', allä 'there is'; 'he hits', 'he is hit'. Gemination is not indicated in Amharic orthography, but since there are relatively few minimal pair
Minimal pair

In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a Phone , phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning....
s such as these, Amharic readers seem not to find this to be a problem. This property of the writing system is analogous to the vowels of Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 and Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
 or the tones
Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning?that is, to distinguish or inflection words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation , but not all languages use tones to distingu...
 of many Bantu languages, which are not normally indicated in writing. The noted Ethiopian novelist Haddis Alemayehu, who was an advocate of Amharic orthography reform, indicated gemination in his novel by placing a dot above the characters whose consonants were geminated, but this practice has not caught on.

Grammar


Pronouns


Personal pronouns
In most languages, there is a small number of basic distinctions of person
Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
, number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, and often gender
Grammatical gender

In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
 that play a role within the grammar of the language. We see these distinctions within the basic set of independent personal pronouns, for example, English
I, Amharic ?? ; English she, Amharic ?? . In Amharic, as in other Semitic languages, the same distinctions appear in three other places within the grammar of the languages. Subject-verb agreement
All Amharic verbs agree
Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related....
 with their subjects
Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituent every sentence can be divided into, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle....
; that is, the person, number, and (2nd and 3rd person singular) gender of the subject of the verb are marked by suffixes or prefixes
Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
 on the verb. Because the affixes that signal subject agreement vary greatly with the particular verb tense
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
/aspect
Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
/mood
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
, they are normally not considered to be pronouns and are discussed elsewhere in this article under verb conjugation
Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical tense, Grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, or other grammatical category....
.
Object pronoun suffixes
Amharic verbs often have additional morphology that indicates the person, number, and (2nd and 3rd person singular) gender of the object of the verb.
While morphemes such as -at in this example are sometimes described as signaling object
Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence Predicate . It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb....
 agreement, analogous to subject agreement, they are more often thought of as
object pronoun suffixes
Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
because, unlike the markers of subject agreement, they do not vary significantly with the tense/aspect/mood of the verb. For arguments
Verb argument

In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntax relationship with the verb in a clause. In English language, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object ....
 of the verb other than the subject or the object, there are two separate sets of related suffixes, one with a benefactive meaning ('to', 'for'), the other with an adversative or locative meaning ('against', 'to the detriment of', 'on', 'at').
Morphemes such as -llat and -bbat in these example will be referred to in this article as prepositional object pronoun suffixes because they correspond to prepositional phrases such as 'for her' and 'on her', to distinguish them from the direct object pronoun suffixes such as -at 'her'.
Possessive suffixes
Amharic has a further set of morphemes which are suffixed to nouns, signalling possession
Possession (linguistics)

Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possession the referent of the other....
: ??
bet 'house', ?? bete 'my house', ?? betwa 'her house'.


In each of these four aspects of the grammar, independent pronouns, subject-verb agreement, object pronoun suffixes, and possessive suffixes, Amharic distinguishes eight combinations of person, number, and gender. For first person, there is a two-way distinction between singular ('I') and plural ('we'), whereas for second and third persons, there is a distinction between singular and plural and within the singular a further distinction between masculine and feminine ('you m. sg.', 'you f. sg.', 'you pl.', 'he', 'she', 'they').

Like other Semitic languages, Amharic is a pro-drop language
Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatics inference . The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is also commonly referred to in linguistics as zero or null anaphora ....
. That is, neutral sentences in which no element is emphasized normally do not have independent pronouns: ?????? ?? 'he's Ethiopian,' ?????
‘gabbäzkwat 'I invited her'. The Amharic words that translate 'he', 'I', and 'her' do not appear in these sentences as independent words. However, in such cases, the person, number, and (2nd or 3rd person singular) gender of the subject and object are marked on the verb. When the subject or object in such sentences is emphasized, an independent pronoun is used: ?? ?????? ?? 'he's Ethiopian', ?? ????? 'I invited her', ??? ????? 'I invited her'.

The table below shows alternatives for many of the forms. The choice depends on what precedes the form in question, usually whether this is a vowel or a consonant, for example, for the 1st person singular possessive suffix, ??? agär-e 'my country', ??? gäla-ye 'my body'.

Within second and third person singular, there are two additional "polite" independent pronouns, for reference to people that the speaker wishes to show respect towards. This usage is an example of the so-called T-V distinction
T-V distinction

In sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a language has Grammatical person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
 that is made in many languages. The polite pronouns in Amharic are ???? 'you sg. pol.' and ???? 'he/she pol.'. Although these forms are singular semantically — they refer to one person — they correspond to 3rd person plural elsewhere in the grammar, as is common in other T-V systems
T-V distinction

In sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a language has Grammatical person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
. For the possessive pronouns, however, the polite 2nd person has the special suffix -wo 'your sg. pol.'.

For possessive pronouns ('mine', 'yours', etc.), Amharic adds the independent pronouns to the preposition yä- 'of': ?? yäne 'mine', ??? yantä 'yours m. sg.', ??? 'yours f. sg.', ?? yässwa 'hers', etc.

Reflexive pronouns
For reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun

A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphora that must be bound by its antecedent ....
s ('myself', 'yourself', etc.), Amharic adds the possessive suffixes to the noun ?? 'head': ?? 'myself', ?? 'herself', etc.

Demonstrative pronouns
Like English, Amharic makes a two-way distinction between near ('this, these') and far ('that, those') demonstrative
Demonstrative

Demonstratives are deictic expression words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others. Demonstratives are employed for spatial deixis and as discourse deictics, referring to propositions mentioned in speech....
 expressions (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs). Besides number, as in English, Amharic also distinguishes masculine and feminine gender in the singular.

There are also separate demonstratives for formal reference, comparable to the formal personal pronouns: ??? 'this, these (formal)' and ??? 'that, those (formal)'.

The singular pronouns have combining forms beginning with zz instead of y when they follow a preposition: ???? 'because of this; therefore', ????? 'like that'. Note that the plural demonstratives, like the second and third person plural personal pronouns, are formed by adding the plural prefix ?? to the singular masculine forms.

Nouns

Amharic noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
s can be primary or derived. A noun like 'foot, leg' is primary, and a noun like 'pedestrian' is a derived noun.
Gender
Amharic nouns can have a masculine or feminine gender
Grammatical gender

In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
. There are several ways to express gender. An example is the old suffix -t for feminity. This suffix is no longer productive and is limited to certain patterns and some isolated nouns. Nouns and adjectives ending in -awi usually take the suffix -t to form the feminine form, e.g. ityop':ya-(a)wi 'Ethiopian (m.)' vs. ityop':ya-wi-t 'Ethiopian (f.)'; sämay-awi 'heavenly (m.)' vs. sämay-awi-t 'heavenly (f.)'. This suffix also occurs in nouns and adjective based on the pattern , e.g. 'king' vs. 'queen' and 'holy (m.)' vs. 'holy (f.)'.

When someone is talking to a male or female, different endings are usually used for masculine and feminine. If you are talking to a male, the word simply ends in an 'h' sound. When you are talking to a female, the word ends in 'sh'. Additionally, when you are talking to a group of people, the word ends in 'achu'. For example: ayIzoh-Be strong, to male. ayIzosh-Be strong, to female. And ayIzachu-Be strong, to all. This is also a common word used frequently by many Ethiopians, or Amharic speakers. It is important to keep in mind that there are irregulars, for example when you are telling someone to COME. NA(Male) Nei (Female) Nu (Everyone).

Some nouns and adjectives take a feminine marker -it: 'child, boy' vs. 'girl'; bäg 'sheep, ram' vs. bäg-it 'ewe'; 'senior, elder (m.)' vs. 'old woman'; t'ot'a 'monkey' vs. t'ot'-it 'monkey (f.)'. Some nouns have this feminine marker without having a masculine opposite, e.g. 'spider', azur-it 'whirlpool, eddy'. There are, however, also nouns having this -it suffix that are treated as masculine: säraw-it 'army', nägar-it 'big drum'.

The feminine gender is not only used to indicate biological gender, but may also be used to express smallness, e.g. bet-it-u 'the little house' (lit. house-FEM-DEF). The feminine marker can also serve to express tenderness or sympathy.

Specifiers
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 feminity, e.g. wänd 'boy', set 'girl'; wänd hakim 'physician, doctor (m.)', set hakim 'physician, doctor (f.)'. For animals, the words täbat, awra, or wänd (less usual) can be used to indicate masculine gender, and or set to indicate feminine gender. Examples: täbat 'calf (m.)'; awra doro 'cock (rooster)'; set doro 'hen'.

Plural
The plural suffix is used to express plurality of nouns. Some morphophonological
Morphophonology

Morphophonology is a branch of linguistics which studies:*The phonology structure of morpheme.*The combinatory phonic modifications of morphemes which happen when they are combined...
 alternations occur depending on the final consonant or vowel. For nouns ending in a consonant, plain is used: bet 'house' becomes 'houses'. For nouns ending in a back vowel
Back vowel

A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
 (-a, -o, -u), the suffix takes the form -w, e.g. 'dog', -w 'dogs'; käbäro 'drum', käbäro-w 'drums'. Nouns that end in a front vowel
Front vowel

A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
 pluralize using -w or -y, e.g. s'ähafi 'scholar', s'ähafi-w or s'ähafi-y 'scholars'. Another possibility for nouns ending in a vowel is to delete the vowel and use plain , as in 'dogs'.

Besides using the normal external plural (-occ), nouns and adjectives can be pluralized by way of reduplicating
Reduplication

Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphology process by which the root or Stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical Derivation to create new words....
 one of the radicals. For example, wäyzäro 'lady' can take the normal plural, yielding wäyzär-o, but 'ladies' is also found (Leslau 1995:173).

Some kinship
Kinship

Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. In anthropology the kinship system includes people related both by descent and marriage, while usage in biology includes descent and mating....
-terms have two plural forms with a slightly different meaning. For example, 'brother' can be pluralized as 'brothers' but also as 'brothers of each other'. Likewise, 'sister' can be pluralized as ('sisters'), but also as 'sisters of each other'.

In compound words
Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one Word stem. Compounding or composition is the word-formation that creates compound lexemes ....
, the plural marker is suffixed to the second noun: betä 'church' (lit. house of Christian) becomes betä 'churches'.

Archaic forms
Amsalu Aklilu has pointed out that Amharic has inherited a large number of old plural forms directly from Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez)
Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court....
 (Leslau 1995:172). There are basic two archaic pluralizing strategies, called external and internal plural. The external plural consists of adding the suffix -an (usually masculine) or -at (usually feminine) to the singular form. The internal plural employs vowel quality or apophony
Apophony

In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammar ....
 to pluralize words, similar to English man vs. men and goose vs. geese. Sometimes combinations of the two systems are found. The archaic plural forms are not productive anymore, which means that they are not be used to form new plurals.

  • Examples of the external plural: 'teacher', ; t'äbib 'wise person', t'äbib-an; 'priest', ; 'word', .
  • Examples of the internal plural: 'virgin', ; hagär 'land', .
  • Examples of combined systems: 'king', ; 'star', ; 'book', .


Definiteness
If a noun is definite or specified, this is expressed by a suffix, the article. In singular forms, this article distinguishes between the male and female gender; in plural forms this distinction is absent. As in the plural, morphophonological
Morphophonology

Morphophonology is a branch of linguistics which studies:*The phonology structure of morpheme.*The combinatory phonic modifications of morphemes which happen when they are combined...
 alternations occur depending on the final consonant or vowel.

Nominalization
Amharic has various ways to derive nouns from other words or other nouns. One way of nominalizing consists of a form of vowel agreement (similar vowels on similar places) inside the three-radical structures typical of Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
. For example:
'wisdom'; 'sickness'
'obesity'; 'cruelty'
'moistness'; 'knowledge'; 'fatness'.


There are also several nominalizing suffixes.
  • : — 'relation'; 'Christianity'; 'laziness'; 'priesthood'.
  • -e, suffixed to place name X, yields 'a person from X': goggam-e 'someone from Gojjam
    Gojjam

    Gojjam was a province in the north-western part of Ethiopia, with its capital city at Debre Marqos. This province is distinctive for lying entirely within the bend of the Abbay River from its outflow from Lake Tana to the Sudanese border....
    '.
  • and serve to express profession, or some relationship with the base noun: 'pedestrian' (from 'foot'); 'gate-keeper' (from bärr 'gate').
  • and — '-ness'; 'Ethiopianness'; 'nearness' (from 'near').


Verbs


Gerund
Along with the infinitive and the present participle, the gerund is one of three non-finite verb
Non-finite verb

In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflection by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, grammatical number, grammatical gender, and grammatical person....
 forms. The infinitive is a nominalized verb, the present participle expresses incomplete action, and the gerund expresses completed action, e.g. ali
bälto wädä gäbäya hedä 'Ali, having eaten lunch, went to the market'. There are several usages of the gerund depending on its morpho-syntactic features.

Verbal use
The gerund functions as the head of a subordinate clause (see the example above). There may be more than one gerund in one sentence. The gerund is used to form the following tense forms:
  • present perfect nägro -all/näbbär 'He has said'.
  • past perfect nägro näbbär 'He had said'.
  • possible perfect nägro 'He (probably) has said'.


Adverbial use
The gerund can be used as an adverb:
alfo alfo 'Sometimes he laughs'. dägmo mämt'at 'I also want to come'.

Adjectives

Adjective
Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
s 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
Amharic language

Amharic is a Semitic languages spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara people. It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic language, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia....
 above). Amharic has few primary adjectives. Some examples are dägg 'kind, generous', 'mute, dumb, silent', 'yellow'.

Nominal patterns
CäCCaC — käbbad 'heavy'; läggas 'generous'
CäC(C)iC — räqiq 'fine, subtle'; addis 'new'
CäC(C)aCa — säbara 'broken'; t'ämama 'bent, wrinkled'
'intelligent, smart'; ' 'hidden'
'worthy, dignified'; 'black'; 'holy'


Denominalizing suffixes
'powerful' (from hayl 'power'); 'true' (from 'truth')
'secular' (from aläm 'world')
-awi — 'intelligent' (from 'heart'); 'earthly' (from 'earth'); haymanot-awi 'religious' (from haymanot 'religion')


Prefix
yä-kätäma 'urban' (lit. 'from the city'); 'Christian' (lit. 'of Christianity'); 'wrong' (lit. 'of falsehood')
In the same way, a relative perfectum or imperfectum can be used as an adjective by prefixing :
yä-bässälä 'ripe, done' (lit. 'what has been cooked/prepared'); yä-qoyyä 'old' (lit. 'what remained'); yä-mm-ikkättäl 'following' ('that what is following', from tä-kättälä 'to follow'); yä-mm-ittay 'visible' (lit. 'what is seen')


Adjective noun complex
The adjective and the noun together are called the 'adjective noun complex'. In Amharic, the adjective precedes the noun, with the verb last; e.g. geta 'a bad master'; bet särra (lit. big house he-built) 'he built a big house'.

If the adjective noun complex is definite
Definiteness

In grammar, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....
, the definite article is suffixed to the adjective and not to the noun, e.g. bet (lit. big-def house) 'the big house'. In a possessive construction, the adjective takes the definite article, and the noun takes the pronominal possessive suffix, e.g. bet-e (lit. big-def house-my) 'my big house'.

When enumerating adjectives using -nna 'and', both adjectives take the definite article: astäway-wa mät't'acc (lit. pretty-def-and intelligent-def girl came) 'the pretty and intelligent girl came'. In the case of an indefinite plural adjective noun complex, the noun is plural and the adjective may be used in singular or in plural form. Thus, 'diligent students' can be rendered tämariwocc (lit. diligent student-PLUR) or wocc tämariwocc (lit. diligent-PLUR student-PLUR).

Literature in Amharic

There is a growing body of literature in Amharic in many genres. This literature includes government proclamations and records, educational books, religious material, novels, poetry, proverb collections, technical manuals, medical topics, etc. The Holy Bible was first translated into Amharic by Abu Rumi
Abu Rumi

Abu Rumi is the name recorded as being the translator for the first entire Bible in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. Previously, only partial Amharic translations existed, and the Ethiopian Bible existed only in Ge'ez language, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia....
 in the early 19th century, but has been retranslated a number of times since. The most famous Amharic novel is Fiqir Iske Meqabir (transliterated various ways) by Haddis Alemayehu (1909-2003), translated into English by Sisay Ayenew with the title Love unto Crypt, published in 2005 (ISBN: 9781418491826).

Translation companies


Because of the rapid growth of Ethiopian communities in Europe, the United States and Canada, several public service organizations started to offer Amharic language translation and interpretation services.

Rastafarians

Many Rastafarians
Rastafari movement

The Rastafari movement is a monotheism, Abrahamic religions, new religious movement that accepts Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, as the incarnation of God, called Jah or Jah Rastafari....
 learn Amharic as a second language because they consider it to be a sacred language, and even the original language. Various roots
Roots reggae

Roots reggae is a subgenre of reggae that concerns itself with the life of the ghetto sufferer, and the rural poor. Lyrical themes include poverty, social issues, resistance to government oppression, repatriation, and Rastafari movement....
 reggae
Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s.While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Music of Jamaica, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady....
 music
Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
ians including Lincoln Thompson
Lincoln Thompson

Prince Lincoln Thompson, known as Sax, was a Jamaican singer, musician and songwriter with the reggae band the Royal Rasses, and a member of the Rastafari movement....
 and Misty-in-Roots have written songs in Amharic, thus bringing the sound of this relatively unknown language to a wider audience.

A notable early attempt to use Amharic in reggae was the anthem Satta Amassagana, mistakenly believed to mean "Give thanks". However, this "Amharic" phrase seems to have been derived from looking in a bilingual dictionary and finding the entries for "give" (actually "he gave") and for "thank" or "praise" (actually "he thanked" or "he praised"), by those unaware of the correct inflections of these verbs, the convention of always listing verbs in the past tense third person, or the pronunciation of the diacritical marks. The actual way to say "give thanks" is a related word, misgana. Ironically, owing to the vast popularity of this song, "to satta" has even entered modern Rastafarian vocabulary
Rastafarian vocabulary

Rastafarian vocabulary, or Iyaric, is part of a created dialect of English. African languages were lost among Black African when they were taken into captivity as part of the slave trade, and adherents of Rastafari movement teachings believe that English language is an imposed Colonialism language....
 as a verb meaning "to sit down and partake".

Software

The Amharic script is included in Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
. Now people can post in forums and blogs, send e-mail, or publish Web sites in Amharic. There are several free software programs, and also some commercial ones, for writing in Amharic. Some such software packages are: Keyman, GeezEdit, Hewan Amharic Software
Hewan Amharic Software

Hewan Amharic Software is a software company based in Ethiopia. It markets a word processor that conforms to the unicode standard, enabling users to write with the Ge'ez syllabary....
, AbeshaSoft and PowerGe'ez.

Grammar


  • [rewritten version of 'A modern grammar of spoken Amharic', 1941]
  • Afevork Ghevre Jesus
    Afevork Ghevre Jesus

    Afeworq Gebre Iyesus was an Ethiopian writer and possibly their first novelist to gain repute. He was born in Zege on the southern shore of Lake Tana....
     (1905) Grammatica della lingua amarica. Roma.
  • Afevork Ghevre Jesus (1911) Il verbo amarico. Roma.
  • Amsalu Aklilu & Demissie Manahlot (1990) T'iru ye'Amarinnya Dirset 'Indet Yale New! (An Amharic grammar, in Amharic)
  • Anbessa Teferra and Grover Hudson. 2007. Essentials of Amharic. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
  • Appleyard, David (1994) Colloquial Amharic, Routledge ISBN 0-415-10003-8
  • Bennet, M.E. (1978) Stratificational Approaches to Amharic Phonology. PhD thesis, Ann Arbor: Michigan State University.
  • Cohen, Marcel
    Marcel Cohen

    Marcel Samuel Rapha?l Cohen was a French linguist. He was an important scholar of Semitic languages and especially of Ethiopian languages. He studied the French language and contributed much to general linguistics....
     (1936) Traité de langue amharique. Paris: Institut d'Ethnographie.
  • Cohen, Marcel (1939) Nouvelles études d'éthiopien merdional. Paris: Champion.
  • Dawkins, C. H. (¹1960, ²1969) The Fundamentals of Amharic. Addis Ababa.
  • Kapeliuk, Olga
    Olga Kapeliuk

    Prof. Olga Kapeliuk , who is professor emeritus of linguistics and African studies, was cited as being among the most important Israelis linguists and researchers of Semitic languages, especially of Ethiopian languages and modern Aramaic dialects....
     (1988) Nominalization in Amharic. Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden. ISBN 3-515-04512-0
  • Kapeliuk, Olga (1994) Syntax of the noun in Amharic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-03406-8.
  • Lykowska, Laura (1998) Gramatyka jezyka amharskiego Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog. ISBN 83-86483-60-1
  • Leslau, Wolf
    Wolf Leslau

    Wolf Leslau was a scholar of Semitic languages and one of the foremost authorities on Semitic languages of Ethiopia....
     (1995) Reference Grammar of Amharic. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. ISBN 3-447-03372-X
  • Ludolf, Hiob
    Hiob Ludolf

    Hiob Ludolf was a Germany orientalist, and born at Erfurt. Edward Ullendorff rates Ludolf as having "the most illustrious name in Ethiopian Studies"....
     (1698) Grammatica Linguæ Amharicæ. Frankfort.
  • Praetorius, Franz (1879) Die amharische Sprache. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses.


Dictionaries

  • Abbadie, Antoine d'
    Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie

    Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie d'Arrast , was a France geographer, notable for his travels in Ethiopia during the first half of the 19th century. He was the older brother of Arnaud Michel d'Abbadie....
     (1881) Dictionnaire de la langue amariñña. Actes de la Société philologique, t. 10. Paris.
  • Amsalu Aklilu (1973) English-Amharic dictionary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-572264-7
  • Baeteman, J.-É.
    Joseph-Émile Baeteman

    Joseph-?mile Baeteman was a French missionary and religious writer. He wrote a dictionary of Amharic language that was a pioneer work and became standard for the study of that language....
     (1929) Dictionnaire amarigna-français. Diré-Daoua
  • Gankin, É. B. (1969) Amxarsko-russkij slovar'. Pod redaktsiej Kassa Gäbrä Heywät. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo `Sovetskaja Éntsiklopedija'.
  • Guidi, I.
    Ignazio Guidi

    Ignazio Guidi was an Italian orientalist. He became Professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He is known as a Hebraist and for many translations....
     (1901) Vocabolario amarico-italiano. Roma.
  • Guidi, I. (1940) Supplemento al Vocabolario amarico-italiano. (compilato con il concorso di Francesco Gallina ed Enrico Cerulli) Roma.
  • Kane, Thomas L. (1990) Amharic-English Dictionary. (2 vols.) Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-02871-8
  • Leslau, Wolf (1976) Concise Amharic Dictionary. (Reissue edition: 1996) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20501-4
  • Täsämma Habtä Mikael G??w (1953 Ethiopian calendar
    Ethiopian calendar

    The Ethiopian calendar , also called the Ge'ez calendar, is the principal calendar used in Ethiopia and is also the liturgical year of Christians in Eritrea belonging to the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church, Eastern Catholic Church of Eritrea and Lutheran ....
    ) Käsate B?rhan Täsämma. Yä-Amar?ñña mäzgäbä qalat. Addis Ababa: Artistic.


External links

  • USA Foreign Service Institute (FSI)
  • Virtual Keyboard for Amharic
  • Zero in Amharic langage by Amdework Mitiku
  • in Voice of America website
  • in website
  • by website.
  • Free Online Amharic/Ge'ez Keyboard
  • Fact about Amharic
  • Hewan Amharic software