Amharic script

አማርኛ (Amharic)
አማርኛ Amarɨññ<<>>a
"ye’ītiyop’iya k’wanik’wa" ("Ethiopian Language") in Amharic Fidel.
Pronunciation	[amarɨɲɲa]
Native to	Ethiopia
Ethnicity	Amharas Ethiopian
Native speakers	36,434,396  (2007 Population and Housing Census)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic South Semitic Ethiopian South Transversal Amharic–Argobba አማርኛ (Amharic)
Writing system	Ge'ez (Amharic syllabary) Amharic Braille
Signed forms	Signed Amharic
Official status
Official language in	Ethiopia
Regulated by	Imperial Academy (former)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	am
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	amha1245
Linguasphere	12-ACB-a
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

አማርኛ

Amharic (አማርኛ) (/æmˈhærɪk/ or /ɑːmˈhɑːrɪk/; Amharic: Amarəñña, IPA: [amarɨɲːa]) is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Semitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by the Amhara in Ethiopia. The language serves as the official working language of Ethiopia, and is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system. Amharic is the second-most widely spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic.

It is written (left-to-right) using Amharic Fidel, ፊደል, which grew out of the Ge'ez abugida—called, in Ethiopian Semitic languages, ፊደል fidel ("writing system", "letter", or "character") and አቡጊዳ abugida (from the first four Ethiopic letters, which gave rise to the modern linguistic term abugida).

There is no agreed way of transliterating Amharic into Roman characters. The Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common, though not universal, among linguists specializing in Ethiopian Semitic languages.