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.
Geʽezሀለሐመሠረሰቀበተኀነአ



translit.
Geʽezከወዐዘየደገጠጰጸፀፈፐ


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
As one example of a discrepancy, a different late 19th-century account says the masculine singular imperative is stressed on the ultima, and that, in some patterns, words can be stressed on the third-, fourth- or even fifth-to-last syllable.
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.
Nouns also have two cases: the nominative, which is not marked, and the accusative, which is marked with final. As in other Semitic languages, there are at least two "states", absolute and construct.
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.
PatternSingularMeaningPlural
ʾaCCāCልብስ 'garment'አልባስ
ʾaCCāCፈረስ 'horse'አፍራስ
ʾaCCāCቤት 'house'አብያት
ʾaCCāCጾም 'fast'አጽዋም
ʾaCCāCስም 'name'አስማት
ʾaCCuCሀገር 'country'አህጉር
ʾaCCuCአድግ 'ass'አእዱግ
ʾaCCəCበትር 'rod'አብትር
ʾaCCəCርእስ 'head'አርእስት
ʾaCCəCገብር 'servant, slave'አግብርት
ʾaCāCəCበግዕ 'sheep'አባግዕ
ʾaCāCəCጋንን 'devil'አጋንንት
CVCaCእዝን 'ear'እዘን
CVCaCእግር 'foot'እገር
CVCawእድ 'hand'እደው
CVCawአብ 'father'አበው
CVCawእኍ/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.
PatternMeaningSingularPlural
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.

Verb conjugation

Syntax

Noun phrases

Noun phrases have the following overall order:
Adjectives and determiners agree with the noun in gender and number:
Relative clauses are introduced by a pronoun which agrees in gender and number with the preceding noun:
As in many Semitic languages, possession by a noun phrase is shown through the construct state. In Geʽez, this is formed by suffixing the construct suffix to the possessed noun, which is followed by the possessor, as in the following examples:
Another common way of indicating possession by a noun phrase combines the pronominal suffix on a noun with the possessor preceded by the preposition /la=/ 'to, for':
Lambdin notes that in comparison to the construct state, this kind of possession is only possible when the possessor is definite and specific. Lambdin also notes that the construct state is the unmarked form of possession in Geʽez.

Prepositional phrases

Geʽez is a prepositional language, as in the following example:
There are three special prepositions, /ba=/ 'in, with', /la=/ 'to, for', /ʼəm=/ 'from', which always appear as clitics, as in the following examples:
These proclitic prepositions in Geʽez are similar to the Hebrew inseparable prepositions.

Sentences

The normal word order for declarative sentences is VSO. Objects of verbs show accusative case marked with the suffix /-a/:
Questions with a wh-word show the question word at the beginning of the sentence:

Negation

The common way of negation is the prefix ኢ ʾi- which descends from ʾəy-, from earlier *ʾay, from Proto-Semitic *ʾal by palatalization. It is prefixed to verbs as follows:

Writing system

Geʽez is written with Ethiopic or the Geʽez abugida, a script that was originally developed specifically for this language. In languages that use it, such as Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is called , which means script or alphabet.
Geʽez is read from left to right.
The Geʽez script has been adapted to write other languages, usually ones that are also Semitic. The most widespread use is for Amharic in Ethiopia and Tigrinya in Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is also used for Sebatbeit, Meʼen, Agew, and most other languages of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it is used for Tigre, and it is often used for Bilen, a Cushitic language. Some other languages in the Horn of Africa, such as Oromo, used to be written using Geʽez but have switched to Latin-based alphabets.
It also uses four series of consonant signs for labialized velar consonants, which are variants of the non-labialized velar consonants:
Basic sign
Basic signቀኀከገ
Labialized variant
Labialized variantቈኈኰጐ

History and literature

In addition to the Bible including the Deuterocanonical books, there are many medieval and early modern original texts. Most important works are also the literature of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which include Christian liturgy, hagiographies, and Patristic literature. For example, around 200 texts were written about indigenous Ethiopian saints from the fourteenth through the nineteenth century. Traditional education was the responsibility of priests and monks. "The Church thus constituted the custodian of the nation's culture", says Richard Pankhurst, who describes the traditional education as follows:
However, works of history and chronography, ecclesiastical and civil law, philology, medicine, and letters were also written in Geʽez.
Significant collections of Ethiopian manuscripts are found outside of Ethiopia in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The 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, looted by the British from the Emperor Tewodros II's capital at Magdala in the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has at least two .

Origins

The Geʽez language is classified as a South Semitic language, though an alternative hypothesis posits that the Semitic languages of Eritrea and Ethiopia may best be considered an independent branch of Semitic, with Geʽez and the closely related Tigrinya and Tigre languages forming a northern branch while Amharic, Argobba, Harari and the Gurage languages form the southern branch.
Inscriptions dating to the mid-1st millennium BCE, written in the Sabaean language in the epigraphic South Arabian script, have been found in the kingdom of Dʿmt, serving at least as a witness to a presence of speakers of Semitic languages in the region. There is some evidence of Semitic languages being spoken in Eritrea since approximately 2000 BC. Unlike previously assumed, the Geʽez language is now not regarded as an offshoot of Sabaean or any other forms of Old South Arabian.
Early inscriptions in Geʽez from the Kingdom of Aksum have been dated to as early as the 4th century CE. The surviving Geʽez literature properly begins in the same century with the Christianization of the Aksum, during the reign of Ezana of Aksum. The oldest known example of the Geʽez script, unvocalized and containing religiously pagan references, is found on the Hawulti obelisk in Matara, Eritrea. There exist about a dozen long inscriptions dating to the 4th and 5th centuries, and over 200 short ones.

5th to 7th centuries

The oldest surviving Geʽez manuscript is thought to be the second of the Garima Gospels, dating to the 5th or 6th century. Almost all transmitted texts from this early "Aksumite" period are religious in nature, and translated from Greek. Indeed, the range and scope of the translation enterprise undertaken in the first century of the new Axumite church has few parallels in the early centuries of Christian history. The outcome was an Ethiopic Bible containing 81 Books: 46 of the Old Testament and 35 of the New. A number of these Books are called "deuterocanonical", such as the Ascension of Isaiah, Jubilees, Enoch, the Paralipomena of Baruch, Noah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Maccabees, and Tobit. The Book of Enoch in particular is notable since its complete text has survived in no other language; and, for the other works listed, the Ethiopic version is highly regarded as a witness to the original text.
Also to this early period dates Qerlos, a collection of Christological writings beginning with the treatise of Saint Cyril. These works are the theological foundation of the Ethiopic Church. In the later 5th century, the Aksumite Collection—an extensive selection of liturgical, theological, synodical and historical materials—was translated into Geʽez from Greek, providing a fundamental set of instructions and laws for the developing Axumite Church. Included in this collection is a translation of the Apostolic Tradition for which the Ethiopic version provides much the best surviving witness. Another important religious document is Serʼata 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.
The use of Geʽez is also known from many excavated inscriptions. Six Geʽez inscriptions are known from 6th-century South Arabia, from during the reign of Kaleb of Aksum, the Aksumite king who conquered the Himyarite kingdom. They record his military conquests and contain many religious references, including to biblical figures and scriptural quotations.

13th to 14th centuries

After the decline of the Aksumites, a lengthy gap follows; Some writers consider the period beginning from the 14th century an actual "Golden Age" of Geʽez literature—although by this time Geʽez was no longer a living language; in particular in the major enterprise of translating an extensive library of Coptic Arabic religious works into Geʽez.
While there is ample evidence that it had been replaced by Amharic in the south and by Tigrinya and Tigre in the north, Geʽez remained in use as the official written language until the 19th century, its status comparable to that of Medieval Latin in Europe.
At this time a lot of works of the Beta Israel had been turned into Hebraized Geʽez, which made the gradual process of Geʽez being the liturgical language of the Beta Israel.
The Ethiopic Alexander Romance was produced in this period, the most important Geʽez-language Alexander legend, translated from an earlier Arabic recension of the Alexander Romance work. Important hagiographies from this period include:
Also at this time the Apostolic Constitutions was retranslated into Geʽez from Arabic. Another translation from this period is Zena ʼAyhud, a translation of Joseph ben Gurion's "History of the Jews" 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. With the appearance of the "Victory Songs" of Amda Seyon, this period also marks the beginning of Amharic literature.
The 14th century Kebra Nagast or "Glory of the Kings" by the Neburaʼed 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, 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 Matsʼhafe Berhan and Matshafe Milad. Numerous homilies were written in this period, notably Retuʼa Haimanot ascribed to John Chrysostom. Also of monumental importance was the appearance of the Geʽez translation of the Fetha Negest, 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 ʼEnbaqom to Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, entitled Anqasa Amin, giving his reasons for abandoning Islam, although probably first written in Arabic and later rewritten in an expanded Geʽez version around 1532, is considered one of the classics of later Geʽez 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, Fekkare Malakot and Haymanote Abaw. Around the year 1600, a number of works were translated from Arabic into Geʽez for the first time, including the Chronicle of John of Nikiu and the Universal History of George Elmacin.

Current usage in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Israel

Geʽez is the liturgical language of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo, Ethiopian Catholic and Eritrean Catholic Christians and the Beta Israel, and is used in prayer and in scheduled public celebrations.
The liturgical rite used by the Christian churches is referred to as the Ethiopic Rite or the Geʽez Rite.

Sample

The first sentence of the Book of Enoch:

External history

  • Phonology and grammar

  • Chaîne, Marius, Grammaire éthiopienne. Beyrouth : Imprimerie catholique 1907, 1938.
  • Dillmann, August; Bezold, Carl, Ethiopic Grammar, 2nd edition translated from German by James Crichton, London 1907. ..
  • Kidanä Wäld Kəfle, Maṣḥafa sawāsəw wagəss wamazgaba ḳālāt ḥaddis, Dire Dawa: Artistik Matämiya Bet 1955/6.
  • Mercer, Samuel Alfred Browne, "Ethiopic grammar: with chrestomathy and glossary" 1920
  • Praetorius, Franz, Äthiopische Grammatik, Karlsruhe: Reuther 1886.
  • Prochazka, Stephan, Altäthiopische Studiengrammatik, Orbis Biblicus Et Orientalis – Subsidia Linguistica 2, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag 2005..
  • Tropper, Josef, Altäthiopisch: Grammatik der Geʽez mit Übungstexten und Glossar, Elementa Linguarum Orientis 2, Münster: Ugarit-Verlag 2002.
  • Weninger, Stefan, Geʽez grammar, Munich: LINCOM Europa, , .
  • Weninger, Stefan, Das Verbalsystem des Altäthiopischen: Eine Untersuchung seiner Verwendung und Funktion unter Berücksichtigung des Interferenzproblems, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2001..
  • Zerezghi Haile, Learn Basic Geez Grammar for Tigrinya readers available at: https://uwontario.academia.edu/WedGdmhra

    Literature

  • Adera, Taddesse, Ali Jimale Ahmed, Silence Is Not Golden: A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature, Red Sea Press,.
  • Bonk, Jon, Annotated and Classified Bibliography of English Literature Pertaining to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Atla Bibliography Series, Scarecrow Pr,.
  • Charles, Robert Henry, The Ethiopic version of the book of Enoch. Oxford 1906.
  • Dillmann, August, Chrestomathia Aethiopica. Leipzig 1866.
  • Dillmann, August, Octateuchus Aethiopicus. Leipzig 1853.
  • Dillmann, August, Anthologia Aethiopica, Herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Ernst Hammerschmidt. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag 1988, .
  • The Royal Chronicles of Zara Yaqob and Baeda Maryam – French translation and edition of the Geʽez text Paris 1893
  • Ethiopic recension of the Chronicle of John of Nikiû – Paris 1883 in Gallica

    Dictionaries

  • Dillmann, August, Lexicon linguæ Æthiopicæ cum indice Latino, Lipsiae 1865.
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