ETHIOPIC LANGCA6E. The earliest monuments of Semitic speech in Ethiopia are the inscriptions found at Vella. These are written in the con sonantal Sabiean script. But while the presence of the artiele all appended to the noun and a final ia to show indetermination is a sign of dose affinity to the Saban, both syntax and voenbitlary indicate that the writers used the Tc.sana accz, the language of Semitic Ethiopia, possibly as early as the seventh century B.C. The bilingual inscription (Greek and Ethiopic) exhibits essen tially the same speech. So far as the language is concerned, there is not much differenee between it and the Riippell inscriptions. which are written in the syllabic script characteristic of Ethiopic manuscripts. These Aksum monuments present the same type of language as the literary docu ments. Geez probably continued to be spoken by the common people until the Zague Dynasty came into power. From that time the Amharic prob ably began to gain upon the classical tongue. \ekunu Amlak, in 1270, made the former the official language, and Geez henceforth became the language of books and of the Church, and as such had a second flourishing period. In its general structure and vocabulary Geez is closer to the than to classical Arabic, but in some respects it has features that are younger than the latter. Thus the ease-endings have dis
appeared; the old passive is lost; aspirated den tals are changed into sibilants. Geez appears to have dropped the article some time before our era. As a substitute anticipating suffixes are used as in Aramaic, and also demonstrative pro nouns. Of a dual there are only a few remnants. The verb has a simple stem, a causative formed by a prefixed a, a second causative in us, a re flexive in ta, and another in an, a third in tan, and a causative reflexive in ast, each of these permitting five vowel changes to indicate shades of meaning. The indicative and the subjunctive of the imperfect are strictly distinguished. The vocabulary has been greatly enlarged by Hamitic words. There are also some Greek and Aramaic loan-words. Geez is to-day represented by two dialects, Tigre and Tigrai• or Tigrina. The lat ter is spoken in Tigre and has been much in fluenced by the Amharic; the former is spoken in the districts north and northwest of Tigre, and shows greater similarity to the old Geez. Am haric has developed many peculiarities not found in any other Semitic language, but characteristic of the Hamitic languages.