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Amharic is the official language of the Ethiopian Empire used in government, in business, in all instruction in government schools and in most newspapers. It is, however, not the only language spoken in Ethiopia. As can be seen from the map on page xv the area where Amharic is spoken as a native tongue is about one sixth of the whole territory of Ethiopia.

Amharic belongs to the Southern Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) family of languages. The number of native speakers of Amharic together with the speakers of the other Semitic languages spoken in Ethiopia (such as Tigriniya, Tigre, Harari, Gurage and others) is less than one half the total population of the Empire. The greatest part of Ethiopia is inhabited by speakers of Cushitic languages (another branch of the Afro-Asiatic family) such as Galla, Agaw, Somali and many others. Since no census has ever been taken in Ethiopia the number of Ethiopians can only be estimated. According to the official data of the Ethiopian government the number of inhabitants of Ethiopia is between 20 and 22 million. It is also difficult to give a reliable estimate of the number of Amharic speakers; it is probably between 5 and 7 million. There is little doubt, however, that due to the constantly growing development of communications systems and the spreading of education Amharic is gaining ground throughout the whole country. It is now the language of greatest prestige and anyone who has had any education is able to speak it, even if it is not his mother tongue. Still others learn it informally as a second language.



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