With the assumption that a language in Ethiopia with less than 10,000 speakers is most likely to become extinct or endangered, about 22 languages are on the list as endangered. A huge percentage of the languages spoken in the country belong to the Afroasiatic family which comprises of Cushitic and Semitic languages. Amharic | Ethnologue. [ONLINE] Available at: Grimes, Barbara F.: "Languages of the World", 1992. Initially, Amharic was the medium of instructions in primary schools, but that changed in many regions within the country and has so far been replaced by other local languages such as Tigrinya and Oromo.According to the Ethiopian census of 2007, the first languages and the largest are the Oromo with about 24,930,424 of the population speaking the language which is equivalent to 33.8% and the Amharic with 21,634,396 users which is equivalent to 29.3% of the country’s population. Amharic has been the working language of courts, language of trade and everyday communications, the military, since the late 12th century and remains the official language of Ethiopia today. 12th ed., Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, p. 248. Dialects spoken in neighboring regions are similar, but those on one end of the spectrum are not mutually intelligible with those on the other end. 13:46. It is a dialect continuum, or a spectrum of dialects that are spoken across a region.
It is optimized specifically for Ethiopian languages Amharic and Geez. Other commonly spoken languages include Somali, which is expressed by about 6.25% of the population (many of whom are from Somalia), Tigrinya, which is spoken by about 6%, Sidami, which is vocalized by about 5%, Wolaytta, which is spoken by about 2.2%, Gurange, which is expressed by about 2%, and Afar, which is spoken by about 1.75%. Most of the Ethiopian Jewishcommunities in Ethiopia and Israel speak Amharic.
It is spoken principally in the central highlands of the country. There are 86 individual languages indigenous to Ethiopia according to Of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, 86 are living and 2 are extinct. It is part of the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family and is one of the official languages of Eritrea. Ethiopian Semitic (also known as Ethiopian, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic, or Afro-Semitic) is a language group, which together with Old South Arabian forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages.The languages are spoken in both Ethiopia and Eritrea, and one of these languages, the Tigre language, is spoken in both Eritrea and Sudan. It is a dialect continuum, or a spectrum of dialects that are spoken across a region. The majority of the 25 million or so speakers of Amharic can be found in Ethiopia, but there are also speakers in a number of other countries, particularly Eritrea (ኤርትራ), Canada, the USA and Sweden. Although Geez is ceased to be spoken popularly sometime between 900 and 1200 AD, it continues as a language of Ethiopian Church. No one alive today is able to understand those languages. Therefore, it is almost impossible to pinpoint which language exactly is most prone to go extinct.
Many of the languages have not been spoken in two generations making them prone to extinction.
Abyssinica Translator is a multilingual machine translation service to translate text, images or documents. Two of the languages of Ethiopia that have become extinct include Weyto, which may have been either Cushitic or Emitic and Rer Bare, which may have been a Bantu language. Even though their classification is uncertain, Omotic languages are also spoken. Here you can find the translation of the 50 most important words and expressions into Amharic. The most common foreign language spoken in Ethiopia is English, though Arabic and Italian are spoken as well. #Ethiopia Welcome to Amharic keyboard Ethiopic - ኢትዮፒክ መተየቢያ Amharic keyboard is built on the latest technologies to help you write in Latin and Geez scripts. Amharic Keyboard by Ethiopic is now the best in the market to type Ethiopian languages on Android. The Ongota language is the next in line at the brink of extinction. Additionally, 3 million emigrants outside of Ethiopia speak the language. Many Ethiopians speak it as a second language, as it is still commonly used in schools as a medium of instruction.