AMHARIC LANGUAGE

also called Amarinya, Amharinya, or Kuchumba, 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 is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Southwest Semitic group and is related to Ge'ez, or Ethiopic, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church; it also has affinities with Tigr, Tigrinya, and the South Arabic dialects. Although the oldest extant records in Amharic are songs and poems dating from the 14th century, significant literature in any quantity did not begin until the 19th century. Amharic is written in a slightly modified form of the alphabet used for writing the Ge'ez language. There are 33 basic characters, each of which has seven forms depending on which vowel is to be pronounced in the syllable. The language has been strongly influenced by the Cushitic languages, especially Oromo. The dialects of Amharic are not strongly differentiated from one another. Nearly one-third of the population of Ethiopia spoke Amharic in the late 20th century.