Geʽez
Geez is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from what is now known as Ethiopia and Eritrea.
As of today, Geez is used as the main liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, the Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community.
Hawulti Obelisk is an ancient pre-Aksumite obelisk located in Matara, Eritrea. The monument dates to the early Aksumite period and bears an example of the ancient Geez script.
In one study, Tigre was found to have a 71% lexical similarity to Geʽez, while Tigrinya had a 68% lexical similarity to Geʽez, followed by Amharic at 62%. Most linguists believe that Geez does not constitute a common ancestor of modern Ethio-Semitic languages but became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested common language.
Phonology
Vowels
Historically, has a basic correspondence with Proto-Semitic short and, with short, the vowels with Proto-Semitic long respectively, and with the Proto-Semitic diphthongs and. In Geʽez there still exist many alternations between and, less so between and, e.g. ተሎኩ taloku ~ ተለውኩ talawku.In the transcription employed by the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, which is widely employed in academia, the contrast here represented as a/ā is represented as ä/a.
Consonants
Transliteration
Geez is transliterated according to the following system :| translit. | |||||||||||||
| Geʽez | ሀ | ለ | ሐ | መ | ሠ | ረ | ሰ | ቀ | በ | ተ | ኀ | ነ | አ |
| translit. | |||||||||||||
| Geʽez | ከ | ወ | ዐ | ዘ | የ | ደ | ገ | ጠ | ጰ | ጸ | ፀ | ፈ | ፐ |
Because Geez is no longer spoken in daily life by large communities, the early pronunciation of some consonants is not completely certain. Gragg writes that "he consonants corresponding to the graphemes and have merged with ሰ and ጸ respectively 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 what value these consonants may have had in Geez."
A similar problem is found for the consonant transliterated. Gragg notes that it corresponds in etymology to velar or uvular fricatives in other Semitic languages, but it is pronounced exactly the same as in the traditional pronunciation. Though the use of a different letter shows that it must originally have had some other pronunciation, what that pronunciation was is not certain.
The chart below lists and as possible values for and respectively. It also lists as a possible value for . These values are tentative, but based on the reconstructed Proto-Semitic consonants that they are descended from.
Phonemes of Geʽez
The following table presents the consonants of the Geez language. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by its representation in the Geez script and scholarly transliteration.Geez consonants in relation to Proto-Semitic
Geez consonants have a triple opposition between voiceless, voiced, and ejective obstruents. The Proto-Semitic "emphasis" in Geez has been generalized to include emphatic . Geʽez has phonologized labiovelars, descending from Proto-Semitic biphonemes. Geez ś ሠ Sawt is reconstructed as descended from a Proto-Semitic voiceless lateral fricative. Like Arabic, Geez merged Proto-Semitic š and s in ሰ. Apart from this, Geez phonology is comparably conservative; the only other Proto-Semitic phonological contrasts lost may be the interdental fricatives and ghayn.Stress
There is no evidence within the script of stress rules in the ancient period, but stress patterns exist within the liturgical tradition. Accounts of these patterns are, however, contradictory. One early 20th-century account may be broadly summarized as follows:- primary stress only falls on the ultima or the penult
- in finite verbs, stress falls on the penult: ቀተለት qatálat, ንግር nə́gər, with the important exception of the 2nd-person feminine plural suffix ክን -kə́n
- in nouns and adjectives, and most adverbs, stress falls on the ultima: ንጉሥ nəgúś, ሀገር hagár, ግዕዝ Gə́ʽz, ጠቢብ ṭabíb, ህየ həyyá ; an exception among adverbs is ዝየ zə́ya
- the suffix -a, marking the construct state or the accusative case, is not stressed: ንጉሠ nəgúśa, ሀገረ hagára, ግዕዘ Gə́ʽza, ጠቢበ ṭabíba
- cardinal numbers are stressed on the ultima, even in the accusative, e.g. ሠለስቱ śalastú accusative ሠለስተ śalastá
- pronouns have rather unpredictable stress, so stress is learned for each form
- enclitic particles are stressed
- various grammatical words and short nouns in the construct state are unstressed
Due to the high predictability of stress location in most words, textbooks, dictionaries and grammars generally do not mark it. Minimal pairs do exist, however, such as yənaggərā́ vs. yənaggə́rā, both written ይነግራ.
Morphology
Nouns
Geʽez distinguishes two genders, masculine and feminine, the latter of which is sometimes marked with the suffix ት, e.g. እኅት . These are less strongly distinguished than in other Semitic languages, as many nouns not denoting humans can be used in either gender: in translated Christian texts there is even a tendency for nouns to follow the gender of the noun with a corresponding meaning in Greek.There are two numbers, singular and plural. The plural can be constructed either by suffixing ኣት to a word, or by using an internal plural.
- Plural using suffix: ዓመት plural ዓመታት, ገዳም plural ገዳማት, ሊቅ plural ሊቃን, ጳጳስ plural ጳጳሳት.
- Internal plural: ቤት plural አብያት, ቅርንብ plural ቀራንብት.
As in Classical/Standard Arabic, singular and plural nouns often take the same final inflectional affixes for case and state, as number morphology is achieved via attaching a suffix to the stem and/or an internal change in the stem.
There is some morphological interaction between consonant-final nouns and a pronoun suffix. For example, when followed by የ , in both nominative and accusative the resulting form is ሊቅየ , but with ከ there's a distinction between nominative ሊቅከ and accusative ሊቀከ, and similarly with between nominative ሊቁ and accusative ሊቆ .
Internal plural
Internal plurals follow certain patterns. Triconsonantal nouns follow one of the following patterns.| Pattern | Singular | Meaning | Plural |
| ʾaCCāC | ልብስ | 'garment' | አልባስ |
| ʾaCCāC | ፈረስ | 'horse' | አፍራስ |
| ʾaCCāC | ቤት | 'house' | አብያት |
| ʾaCCāC | ጾም | 'fast' | አጽዋም |
| ʾaCCāC | ስም | 'name' | አስማት |
| ʾaCCuC | ሀገር | 'country' | አህጉር |
| ʾaCCuC | አድግ | 'ass' | አእዱግ |
| ʾaCCəC | በትር | 'rod' | አብትር |
| ʾaCCəC | ርእስ | 'head' | አርእስት |
| ʾaCCəC | ገብር | 'servant, slave' | አግብርት |
| ʾaCāCəC | በግዕ | 'sheep' | አባግዕ |
| ʾaCāCəC | ጋንን | 'devil' | አጋንንት |
| CVCaC | እዝን | 'ear' | እዘን |
| CVCaC | እግር | 'foot' | እገር |
| CVCaw | እድ | 'hand' | እደው |
| CVCaw | አብ | 'father' | አበው |
| CVCaw | እኍ/እኅው | 'brother' | አኀው |
Quadriconsonantal and some triconsonantal nouns follow the following pattern. Triconsonantal nouns that take this pattern must have at least one "long" vowel.
| Pattern | Meaning | Singular | Plural |
| CaCāCəC | 'virgin' | ድንግል | ደናግል |
| CaCāCəC | 'prince' | መስፍን | መሳፍንት |
| CaCāCəC | 'star' | ኮከብ | ከዋክብት |
| CaCāCəC | 'window' | መስኮት | መሳኩት |
| CaCāCəC | 'chicken' | ዶርሆ | ደራውህ |
| CaCāCəC | 'night' | ሌሊት | ለያልይ |
| CaCāCəC | 'earth' | ብሔር | በሓውርት |
| CaCāCəC | 'river' | ውሒዝ | ወሓይዝት |
| CaCāCəC | 'priest' | ቀሲስ | ቀሳውስት |
Pronominal morphology
In the independent pronouns, gender is not distinguished in the 1st person, and case is only distinguished in the 3rd person singular.Suffix pronouns attach at the end of a noun, preposition or verb. The accusative/construct is lost when a plural noun with a consonant-final stem has a pronoun suffix attached, thereby losing the case/state distinction, but the distinction may be retained in the case of consonant-final singular nouns. Furthermore, suffix pronouns may or may not attract stress to themselves. In the following table, pronouns without a stress mark are not stressed, and vowel-initial suffixes have also been given the base በ in the script.