Abstract

Amharic is the second most populous Semitic language, after Arabic, with some 20 million speakers (16 million of the 1994 Ethiopian censusexpected growth rate to 2009). Amharic has long been the lingua franca of Ethiopia, and, despite recent movement toward local-language primary education, in most schools still the language of instruction in the early grades. (Since the late 1940s, English has been the language of secondary and higher education.) It is recognised in the 1994 constitution as the ‘working language’ of Ethiopian government.