- published: 08 Jul 2013
- views: 9258095
Ge'ez (ግዕዝ, Gəʿəz [ɡɨʕɨz]; also transliterated Gi'iz, and less precisely called Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language that originated in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court.
Today Ge'ez remains only as the main language used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, and also the Beta Israel Jewish community. However, in Ethiopia Amharic (the main lingua franca of modern Ethiopia) or other local languages, and in Eritrea and Tigray Region in Ethiopia, Tigrinya may be used for sermons.
Also transliterated as ä, ū/û, ī/î, a, ē/ê, e/i, ō/ô.
Ge'ez is transliterated according to the following system:
Because Ge'ez is no longer a spoken language, the pronunciation of some consonants is not completely certain. Gragg (1997:244) writes "The consonants corresponding to the graphemes ś (Ge'ez ሠ) and ḍ (Ge'ez ፀ) have merged respectively with /s/ and /ṣ/ 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 Ge'ez."