Amharic language page

Classification and where spoken

Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language of South Semitic (Bender 1976) spoken in the central highlands of Ethiopia.

Number of speakers

Amharic has 8.5 million first-language speakers and about 5.5 million second language speakers ( Bender 1976; WBTR 1982)

Usage

No extensive dialect survey work on Amharic has come to our attention.

Orthographic status

Amharic has a standard orthography.

Sets of learning materials

Because Amharic has a standard literary dialect, only one set of materials is required.