Ithiopia Series Articles-Linguistical/Historical Aspects Every Rastafari Should Know

The first inscriptions in ge'ez are dated to 4th century A.D It is generally considered a South Semitic language. It has replaced the sabey language and alphabet (although that was still used up to around 8th century A.D).

Ge'ez was in turn replaced around 13th century A.D. by the Amharic language in the south and the Tigre language in the north. These languages also stem from the same branch as Aramaic (the language that YAHSHUA most likely conversed in).

Much of Tigrinya and Amharic has been influenced by the Romance Languages as well. During the Italian occupation in Ethiopia and Eritrea in World War II, many customs and languages were adopted into the Habishan (Ethiopian) society. The Ge'ez writing system, (or 'Fidel' as it is known in Ethiopia), forms the basis for most scripts used for writing the various languages of Ethiopia. Ge'ez is also still in use by the Beta Israel Jewish community of Ethiopia for their scriptures and liturgy.

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Ge'ez writing system

The word Ge'ez is also applied to the abugida which is used to write the language. The Amharic in Ethiopia and Tigrigna in Eritrea and Ethiopia use modified forms of the Ge'ez abugida.

Other languages in the Horn of Africa were also historically written using Ge'ez, such as Oromo and Somali, but these have generally migrated to Latin-based orthographies.