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Geʽez
Geʽez (/ˈɡiːɛz/ or /ɡiːˈɛz/; ግዕዝ Gəʽ(ə)z IPA: [ˈɡɨʕ(ɨ)z] ⓘ, and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from Abyssinia, what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Today, Geʽez is used as the main liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, the Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community.
Hawulti Obelisk is an ancient pre-Aksumite obelisk located in Matara, Eritrea. The monument dates to the early Aksumite period and bears an example of the ancient Geʽez script.
In one study, Tigre was found to have a 71% lexical similarity to Geʽez, while Tigrinya had a 68% lexical similarity to Geʽez, followed by Amharic at 62%. Most linguists believe that Geʽez does not constitute a common ancestor of modern Ethio-Semitic languages but became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested common language.
Historically, /ɨ/ has a basic correspondence with Proto-Semitic short *i and *u, /æ ~ ɐ/ with short *a, the vowels /i, u, a/ with Proto-Semitic long *ī, *ū, *ā respectively, and /e, o/ with the Proto-Semitic diphthongs *ay and *aw. In Geʽez there still exist many alternations between /o/ and /aw/, less so between /e/ and /aj/, e.g. ተሎኩ taloku ~ ተለውኩ talawku ("I followed").
In the transcription employed by the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, which is widely employed in academia, the contrast here represented as a/ā is represented as ä/a.
Geʽez is transliterated according to the following system (see the phoneme table below for IPA values):
Because Geʽez is no longer spoken in daily life by large communities, the early pronunciation of some consonants is not completely certain. Gragg writes that "[t]he consonants corresponding to the graphemes ś (Geʽez ሠ) and ḍ (Geʽez ፀ) have merged with ሰ and ጸ respectively in the phonological system represented by the traditional pronunciation—and indeed in all modern Ethiopian Semitic. ... There is, however, no evidence either in the tradition or in Ethiopian Semitic [for] what value these consonants may have had in Geʽez."
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Geʽez
Geʽez (/ˈɡiːɛz/ or /ɡiːˈɛz/; ግዕዝ Gəʽ(ə)z IPA: [ˈɡɨʕ(ɨ)z] ⓘ, and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from Abyssinia, what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Today, Geʽez is used as the main liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, the Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community.
Hawulti Obelisk is an ancient pre-Aksumite obelisk located in Matara, Eritrea. The monument dates to the early Aksumite period and bears an example of the ancient Geʽez script.
In one study, Tigre was found to have a 71% lexical similarity to Geʽez, while Tigrinya had a 68% lexical similarity to Geʽez, followed by Amharic at 62%. Most linguists believe that Geʽez does not constitute a common ancestor of modern Ethio-Semitic languages but became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested common language.
Historically, /ɨ/ has a basic correspondence with Proto-Semitic short *i and *u, /æ ~ ɐ/ with short *a, the vowels /i, u, a/ with Proto-Semitic long *ī, *ū, *ā respectively, and /e, o/ with the Proto-Semitic diphthongs *ay and *aw. In Geʽez there still exist many alternations between /o/ and /aw/, less so between /e/ and /aj/, e.g. ተሎኩ taloku ~ ተለውኩ talawku ("I followed").
In the transcription employed by the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, which is widely employed in academia, the contrast here represented as a/ā is represented as ä/a.
Geʽez is transliterated according to the following system (see the phoneme table below for IPA values):
Because Geʽez is no longer spoken in daily life by large communities, the early pronunciation of some consonants is not completely certain. Gragg writes that "[t]he consonants corresponding to the graphemes ś (Geʽez ሠ) and ḍ (Geʽez ፀ) have merged with ሰ and ጸ respectively in the phonological system represented by the traditional pronunciation—and indeed in all modern Ethiopian Semitic. ... There is, however, no evidence either in the tradition or in Ethiopian Semitic [for] what value these consonants may have had in Geʽez."