Ethiopic Languages (redirected from Ethiopian Semitic languages)

Ethiopic languages

Group of Semitic languages, spoken by more than 25 million people in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Ethiopic has been divided by linguists into North Ethiopic, comprising Ge'ez, Tigré, and Tigrinya (or Tigrai), and South Ethiopic, comprising the rest of the 22 languages. Ge'ez (or Ethiopic) is the oldest Ethiopian Semitic language, first attested in inscriptions from the kingdom of Aksum. It became the language of Christianity in the Aksumite period, and—though probably extinct as a vernacular sometime before the 10th century AD—it remained the classical language of highland Ethiopian civilization and the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church into the 20th century. Tigré has about 800,000 speakers in northern Eritrea, while Tigrinya has about 4 million speakers. The estimated 1.3 million Tigrinya speakers in Eritrea constitute about 50% of the country's population. The most important South Ethiopic language is Amharic.

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Ethiopic Languages 

one of the names for the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, which, along with the South Arabic languages, make up the Southern Peripheral group of the Semitic branch of the Hamito-Semitic languages.

The most recent classification of the Ethiopic languages is that of the American scholar R. Hetzron; it is not, however, universally accepted in its entirety. Hetzron divides the Ethiopic languages into the North Ethiopic languages—Ethiopie (Geez), Tigrinya, and Tigre—and the South Ethiopic languages, which comprise two branches: Outer and Transversal South Ethiopic.

The Outer South Ethiopic languages consist of an n-group and a tt-group. The n-group comprises Gafat and Northern Gurage, a language cluster made up of Soddo and Gogot. The tt-group comprises Muher and Western Gurage, which in turn comprises Masquan and two dialect clusters: Central Western Gurage (Chaha, Gumer, Ezha, and Gura) and Peripheral Western Gurage (Ennemor, Gyeto, Endegen, and Ener). The Transversal South Ethiopic languages are Amharic, Argobba, Harari, and the dialect cluster East Gurage (Selti, Wolane, Ennaqor, and Zway).

In I. M. D’iakonov’s classification, Ethiopic (Geez) is assigned to the Middle Stage, and the rest of the Ethiopic languages to the New Stage, in the development of the Hamito-Semitic languages. The New Stage is characterized by a fundamental change in the grammatical structure and phonetic system common to all the Semitic languages, which occurred under the influence of the distantly related Cushitic languages, nearly all of which are also spoken in Ethiopia.

REFERENCES

D’iakonov, I. M. Semito-khamitskie iazyki. Moscow, 1965.
Starinin, V. P. Efiopskii iazyk. Moscow, 1967.
Titov, E. G. Sovremennyi amkharskii iazyk. Moscow, 1971.
Ullendorff, E. The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. London, 1955.
Leslau, W. Etude descriptive et comparative du Gafat (Ethiopien méridional). Paris, 1956.
Leslau, W. Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background, vols. 1–3. Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1965–68.
Leslau, W. “Ethiopic and South Arabian.” In Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 6: Linguistics in Southwest Asia and North Africa. The Hague–Paris, 1970.
Tucker, A. N., and M. A. Bryan. Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of Northeastern Africa. London-Oxford, 1966.
Hetzron, R. Ethiopian Semitic: Studies in Classification. Manchester, 1972.
IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Ethiopici (Roma, 1972). Rome, 1974.
Language in Ethiopia. London-Oxford, 1976.

A. IU. MILITAREV