Amharic

Amharic, also known as Abyssinian, is one of the Semitic languages. It is written from left to right in a modified system of Geʿez. Moreover, it has about 22 million first-language speakers and 4 million second-language speakers worldwide. In addition, it is the official language of Ethiopia, and most of its speakers are situated in it, as about 21.6 million Amharic speakers live in Ethiopia, so where do the others live? The answer is that there are also speakers in a number of other countries, particularly Eritrea, Canada, the USA and Sweden. Historically, the importance and strength of Amharic language stream from being the language of the ruling class since the 13th century, and after just four centuries, in the 17th century it became the lingua franca in Ethiopia. Nowadays, it continues the series of its importance, as it is used in government, the military, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, public media, national commerce, and in education up to the seventh grade. Like every other language, Amharic has dialects. It has three major dialects: Gondar, Gojjami, and Showa. There are differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar between the northern Gojjami and the southern Showa dialect. The typical word order in Amharic is Subject – Object – Verb. All modifiers precede the nouns they modify. There are four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, and vocative. Definiteness is expressed by an article that has a masculine form, e.g., bet-u ‘the house’ and a feminine form gäräd-wa ‘the maid’.

Possession is signaled by noun suffixation, e.g., bet "house", bete "my house", "betwa" "her house".