Amharic

AmharicWe provide computer based software program and audio CDs that will teach you how to read, write and speak in Amharic, Ethiopias most popular language. Define Amharic. Amharic synonyms, Amharic pronunciation, Amharic translation, English dictionary definition of Amharic. A Semitic language that is the official. Amharic m h r k or m h r k Amharic, Amara, IPA amara listen is an Afroasiatic language of the. Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea by about 25 million people. Amharic Drama' title='Amharic Drama' />Amharic Mp3VOA Amharic provides news and information to Ethiopia. Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia, which has an estimated population of 85 million. How To Install Pngcrush Windows. According to. Amharic amara, also known as Abyssinian, Amarigna, Amarinya, Amhara, Ethiopian, belongs to the Semitic branch of the AfroAsiatic language family. Amharic language One of the two main languages of Ethiopia along with the Oromo language. It is spoken principally in the central highlands of the country. Amharic. Amharic About World Languages Slam    Welcome Amharic amara, also known as Abyssinian, Amarigna, Amarinya, Amhara, Ethiopian, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afro Asiatic language family. Amharic has close to 2. Ethiopia Ethnologue. It is related to Geez, a liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Amharic has been the language of the ruling class of Ethiopia since the end of the 1. In the early 1. 7th century it became the lingua franca of Ethiopia, a multilingual country with 8. Ethnologue. Status. Amharic, with 2. 2 million first and 4 million second language speakers, is the official working language of Ethiopia, along with English and Tigrinya. It is used in government, public media, national commerce, and in education up to the seventh grade. It has been the working language of government, the military, and of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church throughout modern times. Many speakers of Amharic also speak English, Arabic, Afaan Oromo, and Tigrinya. Dialects. Amharic has a variety of local dialects, all of which are mutually intelligible. There are three major dialects Gondar, Gojjami, and Showa. There are especially marked differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar between the northern Gojjami and the southern Showa dialects. The standard spoken and written language is based on the speech of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Structure. Sound system. Vowels. Amharic has seven vowel phonemes, i. They are given in the table below based on Wikipedia. Consonants. Amharic has a rich consonant system. A distinguishing feature of consonants in Amharic is the presence of emphatic sounds p, t, k, ts, t which are produced with the root of the tongue retracted. English second n in canyonj  y in yet. Stress. Stress in Amharic does not affect the meaning of words. In verb stems, stress falls on the penultimate syllable. In non verb stems, stress falls on falls on the leftmost syllable A. K. Wedekind. Grammar. The grammatical structure of Amharic is quite similar to that of other Semitic languages. Amharic uses both prepositions and postpositions to mark relations in sentences. Nouns and articles. Nouns are marked for two genders masculine and feminine. The feminine gender can also be used to express smallness, e. It can also be used to express intimacy. There are special words that indicate gender for people and animals, e. Nouns have two numbers singular and plural. Plural is marked by the suffix o, e. There are four cases nominative, genitive, accusative, and vocative. Definiteness is expressed by an article that has a masculine form, e. Possession is signalled by noun suffixation, e. Verbs. Like other Semitic languages Amharic has a very elaborate verb system. Amharic verb roots usually consist of three to five consonants. Verb forms are derived by applying vowels and suffixes to the roots. A verb form normally has one or more suffixes and prefixes. Sometimes, consonants are geminated doubled. Verbs are marked for person, number, and gender. Verbs agree with their subjects and sometimes with the direct or indirect objects. There are at least ten different classes of verbs, each modifying its stem in a number of different ways. There are two aspects imperfect and perfect. Compound tenses are expressed by means of auxiliary verbs. There are four moods indicative, imperative, and optative. Verbs are marked for voice active and passive. Word order. The typical word order in Amharic is Subject Object Verb. All modifiers precede the nouns they modify. Vocabulary. Amharic vocabulary has been strongly influenced by Arabic and by Cushitic languages, especially Afaan Oromo. Listen to a few basic words and phrases in Amharic. Below are the Amharic numerals 1 1. Writing. Amharic has been a written language for at least 5. It is written in a script called fidel or fidl which means letter, a consonant based syllabary which was adapted from Geez, the extinct classical language of Ethiopia. Originally, the script contained only symbols for consonants. Vowels were added in the 3rd century AD. The script has 3. It is written horizontally from left to right. An example of the consonant t with diacritics indicating vowels is given on the right from Omniglot. There is no standardized system for the romanization of Amharic. Click here to see your name written in Amharic. Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Amharic. Note that represents a comma, and represents a period. Y sw lj hullu siwwld nsa nna b kbrnna b mbtm kkulnnt y allw nw y tftro y mastwalnna hlinaw slallw andu lelawn b wndmamacnnt mnfs mmlkt y gbbawal. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Did You Know The name Rastafari comes from ras   head  tfriyawyan  Rastafarians. It refers to Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia. Many Rastafarians learn Amharic because they consider it to be a sacred language. Various roots reggae musicians have written songs in Amharic. Difficulty. Language Difficulty. How difficult is it to learn Amharic Amharic is considered to be a Category III language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. Basic Resources. Amharic WikipediaAmharic EthnologueOLAC Resources in and about the Amharic language.