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Ge'ez (ግዕዝ, , ; also transliterated Gi'iz, and less accurately referred to as Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea

and northern Ethiopia

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.

Phonology

Vowels

a , later *e Proto-Semitic *a
u Proto-Semitic *ū
i Proto-Semitic *ī
ā , later *a Proto-Semitic *ā
e Proto-Semitic *ay
i Proto-Semitic *i, *u
o Proto-Semitic *aw

also transliterated as .

Consonants

Ge'ez consonants have a triple opposition between voiceless, voiced, and ejective (or emphatic) obstruents. The Proto-Semitic "emphasis" in Ge'ez has been generalized to include emphatic . Ge'ez has phonologized labiovelars, descending from Proto-Semitic biphonemes. Ge'ez Sawt (in Amharic, also called , i.e. the se letter used for spelling the word "king") is reconstructed as descended from a Proto-Semitic voiceless lateral fricative . Like Arabic, Ge'ez merged Proto-Semitic š and s in (also called : the se letter used for spelling the word isāt "fire"). Apart from this, Ge'ez phonology is comparably conservative; the only other Proto-Semitic phonological contrasts lost may be the interdental fricatives and ghayin.

In the chart below, IPA values are shown. When transcription is different from the IPA, the character is shown in angular brackets.

**Consonants**
		Labial	Dental		Palatal	Velar / Uvular		Pharyn- geal	Glottal
		Labial	plain	lateral	Palatal	plain	labialized	Pharyn- geal	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k	kʷ		ʔ
	voiced	b	d			ɡ	ɡʷ
	emphatic¹	pʼ	tʼ			kʼ	kʷʼ
Affricate	emphatic		t͡sʼ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ɬ		χ ²		ħ	h
	voiced		z					ʕ
	emphatic			ɬʼ
Trill			r
Approximant				l	j		w

In Ge'ez, Emphatic consonants are phonetically ejectives. As is the case with Arabic, emphatic velars may actually be phonetically uvular ( and ).
Though not emphatic, is also uvular rather than velar.

Morphology

Nouns

Ge'ez distinguishes two genders masculine and feminine, which in certain words is marked with the suffix -t. There are two numbers singular and plural. The plural can be constructed either by suffixing -āt to a word, or by internal plural.

Plural using suffix: 'year(s)', 'water(s)' (Note: In contrast to adjectives and other semitic languages the -āt suffix can be used for constructing the plural of both genders).
Internal plural: 'house, houses'; 'eyelid, eyelids'.

Nouns also have two cases, the nominative which is not marked and the accusative which is marked with final -a (e.g. bet, bet-a).

Internal plural

Internal plurals follow certain patterns. Triconsonantal nouns follow one of the following patterns.

Patterns of internal plural for triconsonantal nouns. (C=Consonant, V=Vowel)
Pattern	Singular	Meaning	Plural
āCCāC
	ləbs	'garment'	ālbās
	faras	'horse'	āfrās
	bet	'house'	ābyāt
	ṣom	'fast'	āṣwām
	səm	'name'	āsmāt
āCCuC
	ādg	'ass'	āʾdug
	hagar	'city'	āhgur
āCCəCt
	rəʾs	'head'	arʾəst
	gbr	'slave'	āgbərt
āCāCə(t)
	bagʾ	'sheep'	ābāgəʾ
	gānen	'devil'	āgnānənt
CVCaC
	əzn	'ear'	əzan
	əgr	'foot'	əgar
CVCaw
	əd	'hand'	ədaw
	ab	'father'	ābaw
		'brother'	āḫaw

Quadriconsonantal and some triconsonantal nouns follow the following pattern. Triconsonantal nouns that take this pattern must have at least one long vowel

Patterns of internal plural for quadriconsonantal nouns. (C=Consonant, V=Vowel)
Pattern	Singular	Meaning	Plural
CaCāCəC(t)
	dəngəl	'virgin'	danāgəl
	masfən	'prince'	masāfənt
	kokab	'planet'	kawākəbt
	qasis	'priest'	qasāwəst

Pronominal morphology

Number	Person	Isolated personal pronoun	Pronominal suffix
Number	Person	Isolated personal pronoun	With noun	With verb
Singular	1.	ʾāna	-ya	-ni
	2. masculine	ʾānta	-ka
	2. feminine	ʾānti	-ki
	3. masculine	wəʾətu	-(h)u
	3. feminine	yəʾəti	-(h)a
Plural	1.	nəḥna	-na
	2. masculine	ʾāntəmu	-kəmu
	2. feminine	ʾāntən	-kən
	3. masculine	wəʾətomu / əmuntu	-(h)omu
	3. feminine	wəʾəton / əmāntu	-(h)on

Verb conjugation

Person		Perfect qatal-	Imperfect
Person		Perfect qatal-	Indicative -qattəl	Jussive -qtəl
Singular	1.	qatal-ku	ʾə-qattəl	ʾə-qtəl
	2. m.	qatal-ka	tə-qattəl	tə-qtəl
	2. f.	qatal-ki	tə-qattəl-i	tə-qtəl-i
	3. m.	qatal-a	yə-qattəl	yə-qtəl
	3. f.	qatal-at	tə-qattəl	tə-qtəl
Plural	1.	qatal-na	nə-qattəl	nə-qtəl
	2. m.	qatal-kəmmu	tə-qattəl-u	tə-qtəl-u
	2. f.	qatal-kən	tə-qattəl-ā	tə-qtəl-ā
	3. m.	qatal-u	yə-qattəl-u	yə-qtəl-u
	3. f.	qatal-ā	yə-qattəl-ā	yə-qtəl-ā

Syntax

Negation

The common way of negation is the prefix which descends from (which is attested in Axum inscriptions) from ʾay from proto-semitic by palatization, it is prefixed to verbs as following:

nəḥna	ʾi-nəkl	ḥawira
we	(we) cannot	go
we cannot go

Writing system

Ge'ez is written with Ethiopic or the Ge'ez abugida, a script which was originally developed specifically for this language. In languages which use it, eg Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is called , which means script or alphabet.

Unlike other Semitic scripts, Ge'ez is read from left to right.

The Ge'ez script has been adapted to write other languages, usually Semitic ones. The most widespread use is for Amharic in Ethiopia

and Tigrinya in Eritrea

and Ethiopia. It is also used for Sebatbeit, Me'en, Agew and most other languages of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it is used for Tigre, and it is often used for Blin, a Cushitic language. Some other languages in the Horn of Africa, such as Oromo, used to be written using Ge'ez but have switched to Latin-based orthographies.

The script has 26 basic consonant signs used to write Ge'ez:

translit.
Ge'ez	ሀ	ለ	ሐ	መ	ሠ	ረ	ሰ	ቀ	በ	ተ	ኀ	ነ	አ

translit.
Ge'ez	ከ	ወ	ዐ	ዘ	የ	ደ	ገ	ጠ	ጰ	ጸ	ፀ	ፈ	ፐ

It also uses 4 symbols for labialized velar consonants, which are variants of the non-labialized velar consonants:

Basic sign
Basic sign	ቀ	ኀ	ከ	ገ
Labialized variant
Labialized variant	ቈ	ኈ	ኰ	ጐ

History and literature

Although it is often said that Ge'ez literature is dominated by the Bible including the Deuterocanon, in fact there are many medieval and early modern original texts in the language. Most of its important works are also the literature of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which include Christian liturgy (service books, prayers, hymns), Lives of Saints, and Patristic literature. For instance, around 200 texts were written about indigenous Ethiopian saints from the fourteenth through the nineteenth century. This religious orientation of Ge'ez literature was a result of traditional education being the responsibility of priests and monks. "The Church thus constituted the custodian of the nation's culture", notes Richard Pankhurst, and describes the traditional education as follows:

Traditional education was largely biblical. It began with the learning of the alphabet, or more properly, syllabary... The student's second grade comprised the memorization of the first chapter of the first Epistle General of St. John in Geez. The study of writing would probably also begin at this time, and particularly in more modern times some arithmetic might be added. In the third stage the Acts of the Apostles were studied, while certain prayers were also learnt, and writing and arithmetic continued. ... The fourth stage began with the study of the Psalms of David and was considered an important landmark in a child's education, being celebrated by the parents with a feast to which the teacher, father confessor, relatives and neighbours were invited. A boy who had reached this stage would moreover usually be able to write, and might act as a letter writer.

However works of history and chronography, ecclesiastical and civil law, philology, medicine, and letters were also written in Ge'ez.

The Ethiopian collection in the British Library

comprises some 800 manuscripts dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries, notably including magical and divinatory scrolls, and illuminated manuscripts of the 16th to 17th centuries. It was initiated by a donation of 74 codices by the Church of England Missionary Society in the 1830s and 1840s, and substantially expanded by 349 codices, taken by the British from the Emperor Tewodros II's capital at Magdala

in the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia.

Origins

The Ge'ez language is classified as a South Semitic language. It evolved from an earlier proto-Ethio-Semitic ancestor used to write royal inscriptions of the kingdom of in Epigraphic South Arabian. Ge'ez language is no longer thought, as previously assumed, to be an offshoot of Sabaean or Old South Arabian[2], and there is linguistic evidence of Semitic languages being spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia since at least 2000 BC. However, the Ge'ez alphabet later replaced Epigraphic South Arabian in the Kingdom of Aksum (Epigraphic South Arabian letters were used for a few inscriptions into the 8th century, though not any South Arabian language since ). Early inscriptions in Ge'ez and Ge'ez alphabet have been dated to as early as the 5th century BC, and in a sort of proto-Ge'ez written in ESA since the 8th century BC. Ge'ez literature properly begins with the Christianization of Ethiopia (and the civilization of Axum) in the 4th century, during the reign of Ezana of Axum.

5th to 7th centuries

Almost all texts from this early "Aksumite" period are religious (Christian) in nature, many of them translations from Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and later also Arabic. The translation of the Christian Bible was undertaken by Syrian monks known as the Nine Saints, who had come to Ethiopia in the 5th century fleeing the Byzantine persecution of the Monophysites. The Ethiopic Bible contains 81 Books; 46 of the Old Testament and 35 of the New. A number of these Books are called "deuterocanonical" (or "apocryphal" according to certain Western theologians), such as the Ascension of Isaiah, Jubilees, Enoch, the Paralipomena of Baruch, Noah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Maccabees, Moses and Tobit. The Book of Enoch in particular is notable since its complete text has survived in no other language.

Also to this early period dates Qerlos, a collection of Christological writings beginning with the treatise of Saint Cyril known as Hamanot Rete’et, or De Recta Fide, the theological foundation of the Ethiopic Church. Another work is Ser'ata Paknemis, a translation of the monastic Rules of Pachomius. Non-religious works translated in this period include Physiologus, a work of natural history also very popular in Europe.

13th to 14th centuries

After the decline of the Aksumites, a lengthy gap follows; no works have survived that can be dated to the years of the 8th through 12th centuries. Only with the rise of the Solomonic dynasty around 1270 can we find evidence of authors committing their works to writings. Some writers consider the period beginning from the 14th century an actual "Golden Age" of Ge'ez literature—although by this time Ge'ez was no longer a living language. While there is ample evidence that it had been replaced by the Amharic language in the south and by the Tigrigna and Tigre languages in the north, Ge'ez remained in use as the official written language until the 19th century, its status comparable to that of Medieval Latin in Europe.

Important hagiographies from this period include:

the Gadle Sama’etat "Acts of the Martyrs"
the Gadle Hawaryat "Acts of the Apostles"
the Senkessar or Synaxarium, translated as "The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church"
Other Lives of Saint Anthony, Saint George, Saint Tekle Haymanot, Saint Gabra Manfas Qeddus

Also at this time the Apostolic Constitutions was translated in Ge'ez, which provided another set of instructions and laws for the Ethiopian Church. Another translation from this period is Zena 'Ayhud, a translation (probably from an Arabic translation) of Joseph ben Gurion's "History of the Jews" ("Sefer Yosephon") written in Hebrew in the 10th century, which covers the period from the Captivity to the capture of Jerusalem by Titus.

Apart from theological works, the earliest contemporary Royal Chronicles of Ethiopia are date to the reign of Amda Seyon I (1314-44). With the appearance of the "Victory Songs" of Amda Seyon, this period also marks the beginning of Amharic literature.

The 14th century Kəbrä Nägäst or "Glory of the Kings" by the Nebura’ed Yeshaq of Aksum is among the most significant works of Ethiopian literature, combining history, allegory and symbolism in a retelling of the story of the Queen of Sheba (i.e. Saba), King Solomon, and their son Menelik I of Ethiopia. Another work that began to take shape in this period is the Mashafa Aksum or "Book of Axum".

15th to 16th centuries

The early 15th century Fekkare Iyasus "The Explication of Jesus" contains a prophecy of a king called Tewodros, which rose to importance in 19th century Ethiopia as Tewodros II chose this throne name.

Literature flourished especially during the reign of Emperor Zara Yaqob. Written by the Emperor himself were Matshafa Berhan ("The Book of Light") and Matshafa Milad ("The Book of Nativity"). Numerous homilies were written in this period, notably Retu’a Haimanot ("True Orthodoxy") ascribed to John Chrysostom. Also of monumental importance was the appearance of the Geez translation of the Fetha Negest ("Laws of the Kings"), thought to have been around 1450, and ascribed to one Petros Abda Sayd — that was later to function as the supreme Law for Ethiopia, until it was replaced by a modern Constitution in 1931.

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Islamic invasions put an end to the flourishing of Ethiopian literature.A letter of Abba 'Enbaqom (or "Habakkuk") to Imam Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim, entitled Anqasa Amin ("Gate of the Faith"), giving his reasons for abandoning Islam, although probably first written in Arabic and later rewritten in an expanded Ge'ez version around 1532, is considered one of the classics of later Ge'ez literature. During this period, Ethiopian writers begin to address differences between the Ethiopian and the Roman Catholic Church in such works as the Confession of Emperor Gelawdewos, Sawana Nafs ("Refuge of the Soul"), Fekkare Malakot ("Exposition of the Godhead") and Haymanote Abaw ("Faith of the Fathers"). Around the year 1600, a number of works were translated from Arabic into Ge'ez for the first time, including the Chronicle of John of Nikiu and the Universal History of Jirjis ibn al'Amid Abi'l-Wasir (also known as al-Makin).

Current usage in Ethiopia and Israel

According to an article in the Jerusalem Post on November 3, 2009, Gez is the language of Ethiopian Jews, and used in prayer and in scheduled public celebrations. Reference : http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799054655&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull .

Sample

The first sentence of the Book of Enoch:

"Word of blessing of Henok, wherewith he blessed the chosen and righteous who would be alive in the day of tribulation for the removal of all wrongdoers and backsliders."

Notes

Gene Gragg, 2008. "The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum". Cambridge University Press. Roger D. Woodard Ed.
[PAN], pp. 666f.; cf. the EOTC's own account at its official website
[MAT]
[BUD], pp. 566f.
[BUD], p. 574
[PAN03]

References

[BUD] Budge, E. A. Wallis. 1928. A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970.
CHA Chain, M. Ethiopia transcribed by: Donahue M. in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. + John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
[DIR] Diringer, David. 1968. The Alphabet, A Key To The History of Mankind.
GEE The Ge'ez language info card at Ethnologue
[KOB] Kobishchanov, Yuri M. 1979. Axum in SomeCollectionOfWritings , edited by Joseph W. Michels; translated by: Lorraine T. Kapitanoff. University Park, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania. ISBN 0-271-00531-9.
MAT Matara Aksumite & Pre-Aksumite City Webpage
[MUN] Munro-Hay Stuart. 1991. Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0106-6.
[PAN68] Pankhurst, Richard K.P. 1968.An Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800-1935, Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press.
PAN03 Pankhurst, Richard K.P. A Glimpse into 16th. Century Ethiopian History Abba 'Enbaqom, Imam Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim, and the "Conquest of Abyssinia". Addis Tribune. November 14, 2003.
PER Perruchon, J. D. and Gottheil, Richard. Falashas in The Jewish Encyclopidia. 1901-1906.

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