Amharic parallels with Arabic and Hebrew — Vocabulary

Intro

I’ve been studying various dialects of Arabic on-and-off for about 15 years now, and modern Hebrew for around 10. More recently, I’ve taken a few stabs at learning other less widely studied Semitic languages like Aramaic and various languages of Ethiopia* - mostly Amharic but also a little Ge’ez and a tiny amount of Tigrinya.

I’m still far from conversational in Amharic, but at this point I am able to read the alphabet quite well and have a good grasp of the grammar. Since Amharic is much less studied than either Arabic or Hebrew, I’ve occasionally been asked to explain just how similar it really is to its more famous relatives. This post is basically a cheat-sheet for the next time I’m in that situation.

What’s in a name?

Let’s start with some Amharic words you’re somewhat likely to have heard, even if you didn’t know what Amharic was.

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, means “New Flower”. Addis አዲስ is related to Hebrew ḥadaš חדש and Arabic ḥadīṯ حديث .

The name of Ethiopia’s last emperor (and Rastafarian icon) Haile Selassie, meanwhile, means “Power of the Trinity”. Səllasé ሥላሴ is related to Hebrew šaloš שלוש and Arabic ṯalāṯa ثلاثة . Strictly speaking, I guess this should be considered a Ge’ez word, but it exhibits the same sound change as in Amharic — the Arabic “th” sound, which corresponds to Hebrew “sh”, becomes an “s” in Amharic.

Now let’s take a look some more examples. Many of these are words I remembered during my own learning process, but I also owe a lot of this content to D.L. Appleyard’s A Comparative Approach to the Amharic Lexicon (1977).

“Obvious” cognates

Many common words in Amharic, Arabic and Hebrew are related to each other in a straightforward way, without much change in meaning or weird sound changes:

• “House” in Amharic is bet ቤት , which is clearly related to bayt بيت and bayit בית
• The Amharic word for “husband”, “owner” or “master”, bal ባል , is related to baʕl بعل and ba'al בעל (and the ancient Levantine deity, Baal)
• “World”, aläm ዓለም , corresponds to ʕālam عالم and olam עולם
• “Star” is kokäb ኮከብ , related to kawkab كوكب and kokhav כוכב (although the Arabic word more commonly means “planet” now).
• “Head” is ras ራስ , related to ra's رأس and rosh ראש . “Ras” was also an old Ethiopian royal title, as in Ras Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie’s pre-regnal title and the source of the term “Rastafarian”.
• “Sky” is sämay ሰማይ , related to samāʔ سماء and shamayim שמים
• We saw that the root for “three”/“trinity” is similar in the three languages earlier, and most other numbers are related too, which is clearest when you look at the multiples of ten:
  • 10 is assər ዐሥር , like ʕašara عشرة and esre עשרה
  • 40 is arba አርባ , like ʔarbaʕa أربعة and arba'a ארבעה
  • 50 is amsa አምሳ , like ḵamsa خمسة and khamisha חמישה
  • 60 is səlsa ሥልሳ , sort of like sitta ستة and shisha שישה (the original root was probably s-d-s)
  • 70 is sabā ሰባ , like sabʕa سبعة and shiv'a שבעה
  • 80 is sämanya ሰማንያ , like ṯamāniya ثمانية and shmona שמונה
  • meanwhile the words for 2, 20, 9 and 90 (hulätt ሁለት , haya ሀያ , zäṭäññ ዘጠኝ and zäṭänā ዘጠና ) come from unrelated roots

Different meanings

Then again, there are also plenty of cases where the meanings of words have drifted in different directions in the different descendant languages.

• The root l-ḥ-m, which came to mean “meat” in Arabic (laḥm لحم ) but “bread” in Hebrew (lékhem לחם ), means “cow” in Amharic (lam ላም , again with dropping of the h sound)
• The Amharic verb for “to get sick”, ammämä አመመ , is related to Arabic ḥamm حم and Hebrew kham חם , which both mean “hot”. (This is also related to English “hammam”, which came from Arabic as well.)
• The Amharic word for “gold”, wärq ወርቅ , goes back to an ancient Semitic root that apparently meant “green” or “yellow”. As such, it’s related to Arabic waraq ورق (“leaves”, another meaning shift) and Hebrew yarok ירוק
• The Amharic verb meaning “to eat”, bäla በላ , comes from the same root as the Arabic and Hebrew for “to swallow” - balaʕa بلع and bala' בלע
• həzb ሕዝብ , which means "people" or "crowd" in Amharic (and also "nation" or "tribe" in Ge'ez), is related to Arabic ḥizb حزب which now mainly means "political party" (as in Hezbollah, "Party of God")
• One of the Amharic words for “god”, ämlak አምላክ , shares the same m-l-k root with malik ملک and mélekh מלך , which both mean “king”
• The proto-Semitic word for “wolf”, which produced Arabic ḏiʔb ذئب and Hebrew z'ev זאב , ended up meaning “hyena” in Amharic instead: ǧəb ጅብ , likely due to it being the more common wolf-like animal in the area

Sound changes

That last example above may have given you pause - wait, the ǧ in Amharic (“j” as in “joker”, /d͡ʒ/ for real IPA-heads) is related to Arabic dh (“th” in “this”, i.e. /ð/) and Hebrew z?

That’s right. What probably happened is that an original dh sound - which became z in Hebrew, d in Aramaic, and stayed the same in Arabic - first became a d in Amharic and at some point softened to a j sound (like in Brazilian Portuguese, for example).

There’s a lot more where that came from:

• əǧǧ እጅ , the Amharic word for "hand", also shows the softening of the final d that was preserved in Arabic yad يد and Hebrew yad יד
• ləǧǧ ልጅ , meaning "boy/son/child", has a similar relationship to walad ولد and yeled ילד , but also dropping the w/y at the beginning
• Speaking of the proto-Semitic w which became y in Hebrew: that sound change also explains how war ወር (“month”) corresponds to Hebrew yaréakh ירח (“moon”)
• Just like the d sound, t can also soften to a č, which is how you can tell that the Amharic word for “under”, tač ታች , comes from the same root as Arabic taḥt تحت and Hebrew tákhat תחת
• Another tricky sound change is that some emphatic consonants merged in Amharic (but not Ge’ez), so for example the Amharic ṭ ጥ sound sometimes corresponds to an Arabic ṣ ص and Hebrew ts צ . This is how you get cognate pairs like Amharic waṭā ወጣ and Hebrew yatsa יצא , which both mean “to go out” (again with the w/y switch)
• Another such pair is Amharic mäṭa መጣ (“to come”) and Hebrew matsa מצא (“to find”), which you can tell are related despite the difference in meaning
• For an Amharic vs. Arabic example, we have ṭwat ጡዋት and ṣabāḥ صباح , both meaning “morning”. There’s a lot going on here besides the ṭ/ṣ switch too - an original b became w in Amharic, and then a t was inserted to replace the missing h (not that strange when you consider t/h alternations that appear in Arabic and Hebrew)

Loans and mutual influences

In a few cases, rather than descending from the same root, Amharic (or Ge’ez) borrowed words directly from other Semitic languages. In the early days this would have been mostly from Aramaic, and more recently the influence of Arabic has been stronger. There also seem to be instances of influence going the other way.

• The Amharic word for “religion”, haymanot ሃይማኖት , is a loan from Syriac haymānūṯā ܗܝܡܢܘܬܐ , which means “faith”, as do its cognates īmān إيمان and emuna אמונה
• gänzäb ገንዘብ ("money") ultimately comes from an Old Iranian word *ganza ("treasure"), likely via Syriac ganzā ܓܢܙܐ (later gazzā ܓܙܐ ) and also related to Arabic kanz كنز and Hebrew g'nazim גנזים , not to mention Hungarian kincs and Spanish alcancía ("cashbox")
• The Amharic (and Ge’ez) word for “book”, mäṣḥaf መጽሐፍ , was actually borrowed from from Ethiopia into Arabic as muṣḥaf مصحف (at least, according to Wiktionary). That then became the source for words like ṣaḥāfa صحافة (“journalism”) and ṣaḥāfī صحافي (“journalist”). And in Amharic, ṣäḥāfi ጸሓፊ means “writer” or “scribe”
• In another intriguing case, the Arabic word minbar منبر (a pulpit in a mosque) may also have an Ethiopic origin, via the verb näbbärä ነበረ which originally meant “to sit” but now also means “to stay”, “to live” or just the auxiliary verb “to be”. That would make it a relative of the Amharic word for “chair”, wämbär ወምበር , where the initial m became a w due to nasal dissimilation. (See the references in Wiktionary for the sources of this claim.)

Final notes

So there you have it, about what you might expect from a somewhat distant relative* of Arabic and Hebrew, with obvious signs of shared origins but also plenty of differences from thousands of years of separation — and with a dash of mutual cultural influence to top it off.

At some point I’ll be putting together some notes on how the grammar of Amharic compares to Arabic and Hebrew as well, and there’ll be a similar mix of parallels and divergences there too. Thanks for reading!