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Amharic | |
---|---|
አማርኛ (Amarəñña) | |
Pronunciation | IPA: [amarɨɲːa] |
Native to | Ethiopia |
Ethnicity | 31 million Amhara (2020)[1] |
Speakers | L1: 35 million (2020)[1] L2: 25 million (2019)[1] Total: 60 million (2019–2020)[1] |
Geʽez script (Amharic syllabary) Geʽez Braille | |
Signed Amharic[2] | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Ethiopia[3] |
Regulated by | Imperial Academy (former) |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | am |
ISO 639-2 | amh |
ISO 639-3 | amh |
Glottolog | amha1245 |
Linguasphere | 12-ACB-a |
Amharic (/æmˈhærɪk/ am-HARR-ik[4][5][6] or /ɑːmˈhɑːrɪk/ ahm-HAR-ik;[7] native name: አማርኛ, romanized: Amarəñña, IPA: [amarɨɲːa] ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns in Ethiopia.[8]
The language serves as the official working language of the Ethiopian federal government, and is also the official or working language of several of Ethiopia's federal regions.[9] In 2020 in Ethiopia, it had over 33.7 million mother-tongue speakers and more than 25.1 million second language speakers in 2019, making the total number of speakers over 58.8 million.[1][10] Amharic is the largest, most widely spoken language in Ethiopia, and the second most spoken mother-tongue in Ethiopia (after Oromo). Amharic is also the second most widely spoken Semitic language in the world (after Arabic).[11][12]
Amharic is written left-to-right using a system that grew out of the Geʽez script.[13] The segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units is called an abugida (አቡጊዳ).[14] The graphemes are called fidäl (ፊደል), which means "script", "alphabet", "letter", or "character".
There is no universally agreed-upon Romanization of Amharic into Latin script. The Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common among linguists specializing in Ethiopian Semitic languages.