Ethiopic 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.