| Geʽez (; ግዕዝ Gəʽ(ə)z IPA: [ˈɡɨʕ(ɨ)z] (listen), and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. The language originates from what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Today, Geʽez is used as the main liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church and Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community.
The closest living languages to Geʽez are Tigre and Tigrinya, with lexical similarity at 71% and 68%, respectively. Most linguists believe that Geʽez does not constitute a common ancestor of modern Ethio-Semitic languages but became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested common language. |
