Ethio-Semitic languages
Family of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ethio-Semitic (also Ethiopian Semitic, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic or Abyssinian[4]) is a family of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan.[1] They form the western branch of the South Semitic languages, itself a sub-branch of Semitic, part of the Afroasiatic language family.
| Ethio-Semitic | |
|---|---|
| Ethiosemitic, Ethiopian Semitic, Ethiopic, Abyssinian | |
| Geographic distribution | Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan[1] |
| Linguistic classification | Afro-Asiatic
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | ethi1244 |
With 57,500,000 total speakers as of 2019, including around 25,100,000 second language speakers, Amharic is the most widely spoken of the group, the most widely spoken language of Ethiopia and second-most widely spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic.[5][6] Tigrinya has 7 million speakers and is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea.[7][8] Tigre is the second-most spoken language in Eritrea, and has also a small population of speakers in Sudan. The Geʽez language has a literary history in its own Geʽez script going back to the first century AD. It is no longer spoken but remains the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, as well as their respective Eastern Catholic counterparts.
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![[icon]](#/media/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion with: forms of the South Semitic hypothesis, contact with Cushitic languages. You can help by adding to it. (April 2025) |
The unity of the Ethio-Semitic languages has been usually assumed. They, however, do not share many common innovations. A possibility was entertained by Marcel Cohen and Harold C. Fleming that they could represent two separate branches of Semitic that had independently migrated to Africa. Current research regardless outlines reasons to consider the Ethiopian Semitic languages a single group, and notes an absence of reasons for any alternative classification within Semitic.
- Agent noun formation with a vowel pattern CaCāCi, e.g. √kʼtʼl 'to kill' → *kʼatʼāli 'killer';[9][10]
- An innovative verb for 'to exist', *hallawa;[9][10]
- An infinitive ending *-ot;[10]
- Shared semantic shifts in several Semitic roots, e.g.[11]
- √blʕ 'to eat' < Proto-Semitic √blʕ 'to swallow' (replaces PS √ʔkl, which only survives in a derived noun *ʔVkl- 'cereal');
- √lḫsʼ 'bark' < PS √lḫsʼ 'to draw off, peel' (PS √kʼlp survives only in Zay kʼəlfi);
- √ngŝ 'to be king' < PS √ngɬ 'to push, press for work' (replaces PS *malik 'king', which only survives in a broken plural form *ʔamlāk, meaning 'god');
- *ŝʼaħāy 'sun' < PS √ɬʼħw 'to shine' (replaces PS *ɬamš-);
- Shared innovative vocabulary, such as √kʼyħ 'to be red', √mwkʼ 'to be warm', √nbr 'to sit', √ndd 'to burn', *ħamad- 'ashes', *marayt- 'earth'.[11]
A unique "causative-reflexive" prefix *ʔasta-, combining two Proto-Semitic causative prefixes *ʔa-, *š- and the reflexive-passive marker *-t-, is productive in Ge'ez and has left occasional remnants in Tigre, Tigrinya and Amharic, but is not known as an independent prefix in the smaller languages. A similar but shorter innovative formation *ʔat- has arisen in the languages other than Ge'ez, and it is possible *ʔasta- was a Proto-Ethio-Semitic innovation that later lost productivity.[9]
All Ethiopian Semitic languages have ejective consonants, and the more northern languages have broken plurals, which were formerly seen as evidence for their connection with the Modern South Arabian languages. Today these are however considered to be archaic features inherited from Proto-Semitic, which were lost in most or all of the Central Semitic languages such as Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew.[10]
South Semitic Urheimat
The linguistic homeland of the South Semitic languages was widely debated, with some sources, such as A. Murtonen (1967) and Lionel Bender (1997),[12] suggesting an origin in Ethiopia, and others suggesting the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula.[13]
More recently (2009), a study based on a Bayesian model suggested a South Arabian origin, with Semitic languages being introduced from southern Arabia some 2,800 years ago.[14] This statistical analysis could not estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic, but it suggested that the divergence of East, Central, and South Semitic branches most likely occurred in the Levant.[14] According to other scholars, Semitic originated from an offshoot of a still earlier language in North Africa, perhaps in the southeastern Sahara, and desertification forced its inhabitants to migrate in the fourth millennium BCE – some southeast into what is now Ethiopia, others northeast out of Africa into Canaan, Syria and the Mesopotamian valley.[15]
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A primary division of Ethiopic into northern and southern branches was proposed by Cohen (1931) and Hetzron (1972) and garnered broad acceptance, but has not been followed as such in more recent studies.[10] Rainer Voigt[16] argues that features traditionally used to define the Northern and Southern group are not exclusive to them but also found in some languages of the other group, while others do not cover the entire group. Bulakh and Kogan[9][17] agree on rejecting North Ethiopian Semitic, and point to several unique features particularly in Ge'ez and Tigre; they continue to support the broad Southern group, but not Hetzron's Transversal Southern grouping of Amharic–Argobba and Harari–East Gurage.
Hudson (2013)
Hudson (2013) recognises five primary branches of Ethiosemitic. His final classification is below.[21]
- Ethiosemitic
- North
- Gafat (†)
- Soddo–Mesqan–Gurage
- Siltʼe–Zay–Harari
- Argobba–Amharic
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