Amharic language

Spoken in

• Afro-Asiatic languages Semitic languages West Semitic languages West Semitic languages Äthiosemitische languages Südäthiosemitische languages Transversal Südäthiosemitische languages Amharic

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Amh

Amh

The Amharic ( proper name አማርኛ amarəñña [ amarɨɲ ː a] ) is a äthiosemitische language, which is spoken in north-central Ethiopia as a native language of the Amhara. In addition, she is the most important lingua franca of Ethiopia and is spoken in all the cities of the country. It is according to census of 2007, 19.87 million speakers ( 26.89 % of total population) after the Ethiopian Oromo language with the second largest number of native speakers. In addition, it is spoken by many inhabitants of Ethiopia as a second language.

Amharic is the official working and official language at the level of central government and working language in five states of Ethiopia.

Amharic is also spoken in Eritrea by Eritreans who grew up in Ethiopia and older people who have experienced the Ethiopian occupation. In Djibouti living Ethiopian immigrants and immigrant workers also often speak Amharic.

• 4.1 morphology 4.1.1 noun 4.1.1.1 genus
• 4.1.1.2 plural
• 4.1.1.3 Article

• 4.1.3.1 The root principle
• 4.1.3.2 tense and aspect
• 4.1.3.3 mode

• 5.1 syllabic signs

Classification

Amharic is one of the äthiosemitischen languages ​​, a sub-group of the Semitic. Within the Äthiosemitischen Amharic belongs to the group of südäthiosemitischen languages. In this group, it is attributed to the AA subset of the transversal Südäthiosemitischen. As the most closely related language is the Argobba.

History

The origin of the Amharic Amhara region is considered in the southwestern Wällo, which lies in the north-central Ethiopia. Since the beginning of solomonidischen dynasty under Yekuno Amlak in the 13th century it was the Lesana negus, 'Language of the King '. This Amharic was spread over the centuries in many parts of the country. Today it is used by most inhabitants of the regions Nordshewa, Gondar ( Begemder ), Gojjam and Wällo spoken as a mother tongue. Since 1991, this inhabited by Amhara regions form the administrative region of Amhara, an ethnically defined by nine states of Ethiopia.

Phonology

In the volume ratios (phonetics ), the Amharic from the classical Semitic languages ​​differs. In part, older relationships were preserved, such as the glottalized consonants, on the other hand some archaic consonants, such as pharyngale consonants are vanished.

Amharic is usually given in different notation conventions. In the tables, the individual sounds are first listed under the IPA convention. In parentheses is the variant forms are given, which are used in the transliteration of the Ethiopic script and in the philological Ethiopian are common.

Consonants

Vowels

The following are the Transliterationszeichen the Ethiopic script ( in the table in brackets ) and not the corresponding IPA symbols are used for the representation of the grammar.

Grammar

Morphology

The Amharic is characterized by a complex morphology, which has led particularly in the area of ​​verbal morphology to a large variety of shapes.

Noun

Genus

Amharic has both grammatical generation masculine and feminine. Noun the genus but is not morphologically marked directly in the rule. Most nouns are masculine. Certain nouns that refer to people who have a generic genus. Some feminine nouns the genus is characterized by a special suffix -it.

Plural

In Amharic, a distinction is made between singular and plural Transnumeral the one hand and on the other hand. Singular and Transnumeral are formally identical, since they are not displayed by special forms. The category Transnumeral refers to a group of speakers whose exact number is not known. The plural form is displayed on the other hand by the noun ending- occ: eg bet ' house ', betočč ' houses '; säw ' man ', säwočč ' men, people '; mäkina 'Auto' mäkinočč ' Cars'.

Article

The direct item is added as a suffix to the noun. The gender distinction in masculine and feminine also shows in the article: its masculine form is -u, and the feminine form is -wa: betu ' the house ' and Lamwa ' the cow ' (of lam ' cow ').

Pronoun

The free personal pronoun of the Amharic distinguish the genus only in the 2nd and 3rd persons singular. Unlike, for example in the nordäthiosemitischen languages ​​Ge'ez or Tigrinya, there is no gender distinction in the plural forms. Free personal pronouns are used primarily to anaphoric purposes and for focusing. In addition, there are two types of bound personal pronouns that are used for the marking of the object on the verb and the possessive suffixes to nouns.

Amharic has two forms of respect pronouns that are used to speak respectful to someone or about someone.

• Free personal pronouns

• Objektsuffix

• Possessive suffix:

The personal pronoun of the third person and respect have the alternative forms ərsu (s), ərs ʷ a ( she ) and ənnärsu ( you pl. ) And ərswo (you) and ərsaččäw ( he / she resp. ), Which, occasionally in writing but are rarely used in spoken language.

Verbs

The root principle

The morphological structure of the improvement consists of a Wurzelmorphem, the root to five consonants, also referred to as radicals, and a is composed of a specific sequence of vowels, consonants, which fill the scaffold together. Type and number of vowels and possible elongation of the root consonants is determined by the particular aspect or mode shape. As an example, some forms of the root leaf with the meaning ' want to look for, ' are formed:

Tense and aspect

Amharic is a mixed Tempus aspect has a system. It has three Konjugationstypen, which are primarily aspectual distinctions, but can be classified temporally with the aid of auxiliary verbs. The three Konjugationstypen are perfective, imperfective and perfect.

Perfective Within the Ethiopian this form is called Perfect, in fact it is from a linguistic point of view, however, a perfective aspect. The perfective is used to express an action or a state of affairs, which is considered complete without reference to its internal structure. It is often used as a form of narrative past. With stative verbs, however, he expresses a present tense situation.

• Wädä Addis Abäba hed -u ( by - Addis Ababa - she - went ) ' They went to Addis Ababa '
• Assər amät bä - mullu ityop'ya näggäs - ä ' (ten year - all of Ethiopia he - ruled ) ' He reigned ten years over the whole of Ethiopia. '

• Däkkäm -a- ññ ( it - tired - me) ' I 'm tired. '
• Rab - (ä ) -at ( it - did - they - hungry ) ' She is hungry. '

Imperfective The imperfective is also traditionally ' composite imperfect ' named because it is made from the original Semitic imperfect and the auxiliary verb -all. In Amharic the pure past tense can not form a complete sentence, but must always occur with an auxiliary verb, or in conjunction with another Funktionverb. In contrast to the perfective, the imperfective an act or a state of affairs to the exclusion of its temporal limits dar. Depending on verb semantics and context, it might take a habitual or a progressive reading. It can also view the past ( with the auxiliary näbbär ) and in the presence or in the future be located ( with the auxiliary -all).

• Almaz Bunna tə - ṭäṭṭ - alläčč ( Almaz coffee she drinks ) ' Almaz drinks coffee. '
• Nägä wädä Addis Abäba ənnə - hed - allän (tomorrow to Addis Ababa we - go ) ' Tomorrow we will go to Addis Ababa. '
• Bä - zziyan Giza Getahun bəzu yə - Bala näbbär ( in that time Getahun much he eats - it - was ) ' Getahun used then much to eat. '

Perfect The Perfect consists of the Konverb and the auxiliary verb -all. ( Traditionally, the Konverb is also gerund. ) The Perfect is the expression of actions and situations that took place in the past or have started and continue to affect the present.

• Wädä Addis Abäba hed -a- lläčč ( to Addis Ababa it - is - gone ) ' She has gone to Addis Ababa (and still there). '
• ' ya - abbat -e Bäre əgr - u täsäbr -o- ʷ all ( his leg - of - father - my bull he - is - broken) ' My father's bull leg is broken. '

• Bunna -w -o- qäsqəs ʷ all (coffee - he - became -cold ) ' The coffee is cold. '

Mode

Syntax

The set position of the Amharic is SOV ( subject-object - verb), that is, the verb comes at the end of the sentence and subordinate clauses precede the main clause.

The example shows a simple sentence with subject ( Käbbädä ), object (the rope) and verb ({ he } section) at the end of a sentence.

Font

The Amharic is written with the Ethiopic script, which was originally developed from the South Arabian font for the Geez. For the illustration of some consonants, which do not exist in Ge'ez some characters were modified. The oldest written records of Amharic, the Emperor altamharischen songs from the 14th century that have been published for the first time by Guidi (Le canzoni geez - Amarina in onore di Ré Abissini, Rome 1889). The beginning of the modern literature of Amharic, but is not expected in the 19th century with writing a chronicle of Emperor Tewodrus.

Syllabic signs

The correct representation of the table requires a Unicode character set (see Unicode block Ethiopian) covers the Ge'ez area.