Ethiopian Semitic (also Ethio-Semitic, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic or Abyssinian) is a family of languages spoken in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

, Eritrea and Sudan. They form the western branch of the

South Semitic languages South Semitic is a putative branch of the Semitic languages, which form a branch of the larger Afro-Asiatic language family, found in (North and East) Africa and Western Asia. History The "homeland" of the South Semitic languages is widely d ...

, itself a sub-branch of Semitic, part of the Afroasiatic language family. With 21,811,600 total speakers as of 2007, including around 4,000,000

second language A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...

speakers, Amharic is the most widely spoken language of Ethiopia and second-most commonly spoken Semitic language in the world (after

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Tigrinya (; also spelled Tigrigna) is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. History and literatur ...

has 7 million speakers and is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea. There is a small population of Tigre speakers in Sudan, and it is the second-most spoken language in Eritrea. The Ge'ez language has a literary history in its own Ge'ez script going back to the first century AD. It is no longer spoken but remains the liturgical language of the

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, as well as their respective

Eastern Catholic The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (''sui iuris'') particular churches of ...

counterparts. The "homeland" of the South Semitic languages is widely debated, with sources such as A. Murtonen (1967) and Lionel Bender (1997), suggesting an origin in Ethiopia and others suggesting the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. A study based on a

Bayesian model A Bayesian network (also known as a Bayes network, Bayes net, belief network, or decision network) is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of variables and their conditional dependencies via a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Ba ...

suggested the latter. This statistical analysis could not estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic but it suggested that the divergence or East, Central, and South Semitic branches occurred in the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...

. The modern Ethiopian Semitic languages all share subject–object–verb (SOV)

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

as part of the

Ethiopian language area The Ethiopian language area is a hypothesized linguistic area that was first proposed by Charles A. Ferguson (1970, 1976), who posited a number of phonological and morphosyntactic features that were found widely across Ethiopia and Eritrea, incl ...

, but Ge'ez had verb-subject-object (VSO) order in common with other Semitic languages spoken in what is now

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...

Classification

The division of Ethiopic into northern and southern branches was proposed by Cohen (1931) and Hetzron (1972) and garnered broad acceptance, but has been challenged by Rainer Voigt, who concludes that the northern and southern languages are closely related. Semitic languages genealogy

* North Ethiopic **

Geʽez Geez (; ' , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. The language originates from what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgi ...

(Classical Ethiopic) † *** Dahalik *** Tigre **

* South Ethiopic ** Transversal South Ethiopic *** Amharic–Argobba **** Amharic – Amharic is the working language of the Federal Government of Ethiopia. **** Argobba *** Harari–East Gurage **** Harari **** East Gurage ***** Silt'e (Silt'e; dialects Ulbare,

Wolane The Wolane people are an ethnic group in southern Ethiopia. Wolane people speak a Semitic language which is closely related to Sil'te, Zay and Harari languages. One of the Wolane peoples ancestor was Kabir Hamid who arrived from Harar. Wolane’s ...

, Inneqor) ***** Zway (Zay) ** Outer South Ethiopic *** n-group: **** Gafat – extinct **** Soddo (Kistane) *** tt-group: **** Mesmes – extinct (sometimes considered Inor) **** Muher **** West Gurage ***** Mesqan (Masqan) ***** Sebat Bet ****** Sebat Bet Gurage (dialects Chaha, Ezha, Gumer, Gura) ****** Inor (dialects Ennemor nor proper Endegegn, Gyeto)

Hudson (2013)

Hudson (2013) recognises five primary branches of Ethiosemitic. His classification is below. ;Ethiosemitic * North ** Ge'ez ** Tigre–

* Gafat (†) * Soddo– Mesqan–

Gurage The Gurage (, Gurage: ጉራጌ) are a Semitic-speaking ethnic group inhabiting Ethiopia.G. W. E. Huntingford, "William A. Shack: The Gurage: a people of the ensete culture" They inhabit the Gurage Zone, a fertile, semi-mountainous region in c ...

** Soddo ** Mesqan–

*** Mesqan ***

**** Muher **** Chaha– Inor * Silt'e– Zay– Harari ** Harari ** Silt'e, Zay * Argobba– Amharic

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Authority control Semitic languages Western South Semitic languages Languages of Ethiopia Languages of Eritrea Subject–verb–object languages