Language
The official language in Ethiopia is the Amharic language, a Semitic language which is spoken by 21,631,370 people or 29.33% of the population (2.7 million expatriate). Amharic is written with the Ge'ez script, which derives its name from the ancient Semitic Ge'ez language. Ge'ez is largely extinct as a productive language but is still in liturgical use by the Beta Israel Jewish community and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. However, the largest language in Ethiopia is the Oromo language, a Cushitic language spoken by 33.8% of the population. The Tigrinya language is related to Amharic, but mostly spoken in northern Ethiopia in the state of Tigray.
Read more about this topic: Ethiopian Society
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The “sayings” of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech—it is a gift from heart to heart.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)
“As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)