Demeke independent researcher and ronny meyer addis ababa. Often, only inflectional paradigms with translation equivalents are provided whose designations merge functional and formal features into. Pdf contactinduced language change in selected ethiopian. 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. It is spoken as a first language by the amharas and as a lingua franca by other populations residing in major cities and towns of ethiopia. Courses and degree programmes in ethiopianeritrean. Semitic in an afroasiatic context family, and a detailed account of the history and various developments in the internal classification of cushitic can be found in. Cultural heritage of christian ethiopia, salvation, preservation, research denis nosnitsin. Semitic languages definition, map, tree, distribution. We have also shown that the morphological complexity of the ethio semitic languages has a negative impact on the performance of the smt especially when they are target languages. Many descriptions of ethiosemitic languages do not pay much attention to the analysis of aspect and tense. The ethiopian alphabet or amharic letters is also known as ethiopic or geez is one of the oldest used in the world. The argobba exists in the cliff hills of northeastern shewa.
Nauka, central department of oriental literature, 1965 pp 12 is a language group which forms the western branch of the south semitic languages. Ethiopian semitic verbs have a form of internal reduplication, often termed the frequentative, which appears to be formed by infixing a reduplicative syllable into a regular verb stem. The biggest problem in ethiopia is not the oromo population or amharas, it is foreign interests in ethiopia creating chaos. Linguistic distance and mutual intelligibility among south.
Although most scholars assign them to the afroasiatic language phylum, this classification is subject to ongoing debate. The sixteen essays in this work deal with the representation of words in semitic languages. East semitic, northwest semitic, languages of the arabian peninsula, and ethio semitic. Several ethiopian semitic languages are spoken in eritrea and ethiopia, with a small population of tigre language speakers in sudan.
The semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the middle east, north africa and the horn of africa. They are generally grouped together with the dialects of the south arabic language as southern peripheral semitic or south arabicethiopic. Ethiosemitic languages, the semitic languages of ethiopia and eritrea, including ge. Prices in represent the retail prices valid in germany unless otherwise indicated.
For this purpose, i first illustrated my conceptual understanding of tenseaspect with data from amharic. With a written history of nearly five thousand years, the semitic languages comprise one of the worlds earliest attested and longest attested language families. Amharic is the official national language of ethiopia. The ethiopian grade 12 amharic textbook consists of 9 units and 220 pages. These are semitic, cushitic, omotic, and nilosaharan. Although geez is ceased to be spoken popularly sometime between 900 and 1200 ad, it continues as a. Jul 27, 2017 this video is about amharic a semitic language related to arabic, hebrew, and others. Mesqan is a south ethio semitic tongue which is mainly worn in daytoday message by a people of 179,737 communities in the gurage zone, ethiopia, whose linguistic skin was not well expressed. Ethiosemitic languages are variants of the semitic language family which are spoken in ethiopia and in. It is an electives textbook that comes under mother tongue nationality language group. Tigrinya, or tigrai, of northern ethiopia and central eritrea. Peace corps ethiopia amharic language manual introduction page 2 of 207 introduction acknowledgments the first edition of this amharic language training manual was developed by eseynesh fantahun and ato mekonnen lemma in 2009 with. Ethiopian semitic is a family of languages spoken in ethiopia, eritrea and sudan. Ambaric, tigrinya, tigre, and chaha spoken by fewer than 100,000 but selected as an example of the remaining ethiosemitic.
About twenty semitic languages are spoken in eritrea and ethiopia. Ethiopian manuscript studies yesterday and today ethio spare. One is the internal classification of the ethio semitic languages, especially that of southethiopic, and the other is the position of ethio semitic itself within the overall. This is one of most ethiopian native language for students.
As such, these languages have been widely studied for many centuries. Schloezer in 1781 to the language family to which hebrew belongs because the languages then reckoned among this family except canaanite were spoken by peoples included in genesis 10. Semitic languages in contact contains twenty case studies analysing various contact situations involving semitic languages. References abstract the article gives an overview of phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical contact fea. Thus, language provides a channel of communication. Amharic also known as amarinya, amarigna is a semitic language spoken in ethiopia. In addition, somali also contains old qahtani words, common to cushitic and semitic languages. Ambaric, tigrinya, tigre, and chaha spoken by fewer than 100,000 but selected as an example of the remaining ethio semitic. Ratcliffe 1997, but must be an independent morphological entity. Palmer, university of reading to a large extent, the non semitic languages of ethiopia are coextensive with those that were formerly all called cushitic, but have more recently been divided into cushitic and omotic. Some of these features are genetic and others have been acquired by contact and diffusion among languages for long periods of time.
The inner aspire of this paper is to offer a complete account of tense, aspect, mood and aktionsart structures of the mesqan tongue. Omotic languages, family of about 40 languages spoken in western ethiopia. The ethio eritrean languages share a number of phonological, grammatical and lexical traits. In particular, the semitic languages are spoken in the northern half of the country. Jun, 2018 this video was made to compare the beautiful semitic languages.
Ethiopian semitic also known as ethiopian, ethiosemitic, ethiopic, or afro semitic is a language group, which together with old south arabian forms the western branch of the south semitic languages. The semitic languages are spoken in northern, central and eastern ethiopia mainly in tigray, amhara, harar and northern part of the southern peoples state regions. Two of the semitic languages, hebrew and arabic, are the holy languages of major religions, judaism and islam, respec tively. It opens with a presentation of semitic languages and of the larger afroasiatic phylum, to which semitic belongs along with ancient egyptian, libycoberber, cushitic, and chadic. East cushitic and west cushitic and even ethiosemitic e. Ethiopian semitic languages wikipedia republished wiki 2. This second edition has been fully revised, with new chapters and a wealth of additional material. The ethiosemitic languages re examining the classification girma a. The languages are often referred to collectively as guraginya by other ethiopians inya is the amharic suffix for most ethiopian semitic languages. There has been little work on computational grammars for amharic or other ethio semitic languages and their use for parsing and generation. The semitic languages 2nd edition john huehnergard.
Ethiopian semitic also known as ethiosemitic or ethiopic, or in the past by a few linguists as abyssinian due to geographyigor mikhailovich diakonov. According to the 1994 census amharic is the most commonly spoken language in ethiopia. The semitic family forms part of a wider grouping generally called hamito semitic, but. Ethiopian semitic languages unionpedia, the concept map. Aug 01, 2017 the most widely spoken languages of ethiopia. Together with the razihi language, the only surviving member of old south arabian, they form the western branch of the south semitic languages, itself a subbranch of semitic, part of the afroasiatic language family. Ethiopian semitic also known as ethiosemitic or ethiopic, or in the past by a few linguists as abyssinian due to geography is a language group which forms the western branch of the south semitic languages. The non semitic languages of ethiopia issue 5 of occasional papers series, occasional papers series issue 5 of monograph michigan state university. International journal of humanities, art and social studies ijhas, vol. Monograph issue 5 of monograph michigan state university.
There were mistransliterated words in amharic part. They constitute a branch of the afroasiatic language family. The influence of cushitic on the semitic languages of ethiopia a problem of substratum1 wolf leslau the student of the ethiopic languages, 2 even though he knows that these languages belong to the semitic group, cannot help being struck by their nonsemitic character. Tigrigna and amharigna amharic are the modern languages which are derived from geez. South ethio semitic is further divided into outer south ethio semitic and. The chapter sketches the development of semitic linguistics. Moreover, unlike the amhara and tigray, members of other ethio semitic groups do not share the aksumite heritage and orthodox christianity, and their traditional economic base is different.
The similarity and mutual intelligibility between amharic and. Although some scholars once considered the socalled ethiopic languages to be a branch within semitic, these languages are now referred to as ethio semitic. He concludes that most of the authors in this volume argue against the traditional most often triconsonantal root preferring a word or stembased approach 23. Ethiosemitic languages, except geez, differ from the other semitic languages mainly by having ov word order. Pdf aspect and tense in ethiosemitic languages ronny. Project muse the nonsemitic languages of ethiopia ed. The semitic languages, previously also named syroarabian languages, are a branch of the afroasiatic language family originating in the middle east that are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of western asia, north africa and the horn of africa, as well as in often large immigrant and expatriate communities in north america, europe and australasia. Ethiopian languages originally belonged to two major groups. Amharic is also known to be the second most widely spoken semitic language in the world. If the inline pdf is not rendering correctly, you can download the pdf file here. In 2 i discuss the nature of frequentative formation in various ethiopian semitic languages. The ethiosemitic languages reexamining the classification.
They will acquire ability in analyzing texts in ethiopian languages, both linguistically and philologically, and thus gain insight into such areas of knowledge as history especially ancient and premodern, historical linguistics, religious history of ethiopia and eritrea, literature, and manuscript studies. I also present evidence from south ethiosemitic languages that the root cannot be construed as a phonological unit cf. The formation of ethiopian semitic internal reduplication. However, the use of these languages was limited to the nonformal education sector and the government did not push forward to use them as instructional languages in the formal system ayalew, 1999. Geez old ethiopic, no longer spoken and the languages sill spoken. Contactinduced language change in selected ethiopian semitic languages grima a. Project muse language processing and acquisition in. Vo parametric variation has been eliminated from certain versions of generative theory in favor of the assumption of uniform linear order lca kayne 1994.
Semitic in an afroasiatic context family, and a detailed account of the history and various developments in the internal classification of cushitic can be found in tosco 2000 see also hayward 2003. Committee on ethiopian studies issue 5 of occasional papers series michigan state university. The influence of cushitic on the semitic languages of. For the purpose of analysis, the term geez will simply refer to the script and not the language, since the script is applicable to its modern counterparts, just as roman does not refer to the ancient roman spoken language but the alphabet of the same name. The most widely spoken semitic languages today are. Shortly after this split, the initial w sound in northwest semitic became y12. English, arabic, italian and french are widely spoken by many ethiopians.
Mesqanis a gurage language belonging to the south ethio semitic division of the ethio semitic language group which is mainly used in daytoday communication by a population of about179,737 people in the gurage zone, ethiopia, whose linguistic features were not well described. The languages are spoken in both ethiopia and eritrea, and one of these languages, the tigre language, is spoken in both eritrea and sudan. Second only to arabic, and it uses the ancient language of geez as its script, this is known as the fidel. As it is widely known, ethiopian languages possess a number of common features. Library of congress federal research division country profile.
A third language, aramaic, has played a significant role in the histories of both christianity and judaism. The semitic languages presents a comprehensive survey of the individual languages and language clusters within this language family, from their origins in antiquity to their presentday forms. Prices in gbp apply to orders placed in great britain only. The north ethiosemitic group includes tigrinya, tigre, and the extinct language ge. Somali has adopted many arabic words, both modern phrases to deal with modern institutions, such as government and finance, and older arabic terms to discuss international trade and religion. On the other hand, the nilosaharan family includes the rest of the languages. Semitic languages in contactsyntactic changes in the verbal system and in verbal complementation.
I show that while all ethio semitic languages follow the same general pattern, this may be overridden by templatic constraints and more importantly, by sonority considerations holding of adjacent. They form the western branch of the south semitic languages, itself a subbranch of semitic, part of the afroasiatic language family. Ethiopian semitic also ethio semitic, ethiosemitic, ethiopic or abyssinian is a family of languages spoken in ethiopia, eritrea and sudan. The semitic languages of ethiopia are divided into two groups. In this presentation, i argued that ethiosemitic languages are primarily aspectbased but developed a secondary tense system. It is a native language for over 27 million people in ethiopia. The number of persons speaking other ethio semitic languages is significantly smaller than the number who speak amharic and tigrinya. Geez was the official language of ethiopia before amharic. The gurage languages, which are not always mutually intelligible, belong to the semitic branch of the afroasiatic language family. The languages treated span from ancient semitic languages, such as akkadian, aramaic, classical ethiopic, hebrew, phoenician, and ugaritic, to modern ones, including languages dialects belonging to the modern arabic, modern south arabian, neoaramaic, and neoethiopian. Introduction there are two issues which are not settled in the literature on semitic. The languages treated span from ancient semitic languages, such as akkadian, aramaic, classical ethiopic, hebrew, phoenician, and ugaritic, to modern ones, including languages dialects belonging to the modern arabic, modern south arabian, neoaramaic, and neo ethiopian. In ethiopia s southern lacustrine regions live a variety of peoples, of whom the most important are the semitic speaking gurage and the cushiticspeaking konso and sidama. This video is about amharic a semitic language related to arabic, hebrew, and others.
Ethiopian languages semitic, cushitic, omotic and nilo. Members of the semitic group are spread throughout north africa and southwest asia and have played preeminent roles in the linguistic and cultural landscape of the middle east for more than 4,000 years. Ethiopian grade 12 amharic textbook for students pdf. Dativemarked accusatives in spanish and ethiosemitic. Dativemarked accusatives in spanish and ethio semitic over twenty years ago, jaeggli 1982, 1986 examined the dual object marking system of argentinian spanish, noting that often when an object np occurs with a coindexed clitic, it must be precedes by a dative marker. Amharic, one of the principal languages of modern ethiopia.
Amharic is also spoken by over 40,000 people in israel. The performance of the bidirectional smt systems shows that all the corpora can be used for further investigations. Abstract the present study has examined the similarity and the mutual intelligibility between amharic and tigrigna using three tools namely levenshtein distance, intelligibility test and questionnaires. Abstract mesqan is a south ethio semitic language which is predominantly used in daytoday communication by a. Amharic is rooted from the ancient language geez geez. It is estimated that amharic is the language of some 2. Proposed language reform for ethiopia is a voluminous large book that runs into 329 pages with 5 parts and 14 chapters and additional part 6 with appendices and endnotes. The oromo moved north through the southern highlands, bypasssing the sidama on the west, and into the central highlands, where they settled in the center and west on land, some. The influence of cushitic on the semitic languages of ethiopia a problem of substratum1 wolf leslau the student of the ethiopic languages, 2 even though he knows that these languages belong to the semitic group, cannot help. Pdf this paper is meant to indicate the different functional tasks covered by the two multifunctional bound morphemes. The semitic languages are thus inextricably linked to this region that is often called the cradle of civilization, and that still today is the subject of much international attention. Semitic languages ethiogrio ethiopia news ethiopia.
This article concerns the classification of the ethiopian semitic languages. The ethiopian languages are divided into four major language groups. This book really contributes immensely to the educational curricula in ethiopia in general and the language, creative writing and literature, and humanities departments of the. Ethiopian languages semitic, cushitic, omotic and nilosaharan. The last language to separate was semitic, which split from berber and ancient egyptian, two other afroasiatic languages, and migrated eastward into far southwestern asia. Woyane came to power supported by the same foreign enemies, now foreign enemies are targeting woyane itself. Argobba is a south ethio semitic verbal which is mainly practiced in daytoday message by a people of around 140, 4 societies in the argobba zone central statistical agency 2008.
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