Jewish Amharic

chapter 1 Jewish Amharic Anbessa Teferra 1 Historical Introduction 8 2 Jewish Amharic Literature and Media 10 3 Linguistic Profile of Jewish Amharic 10 3.1 Phonology 12 3.2 Lexicon 13 3.2.1 Lack of an Amharic Equivalent 13 3.2.2 Words with Amharic Equivalents 14 3.2.3 Substitution of Hebrew Words and Phrases with Amharic Ones 15 3.2.4 Creative Innovations 16 3.3 Morphological Integration of Borrowings 16 3.3.1 Borrowing of Nouns 16 3.3.2 Borrowing of Verbs 18 3.3.3 Deadjectival Forms 19 3.3.4 Attenuatives and Intensives (or Augmentatives) 19 4 Further Study 20 5 Bibliography 20 1 Historical Introduction Ethiopian Jews traditionally lived in North and Northwestern Ethiopia, mostly in the Gondar region, with a small percentage in the Tigrai region, in hundreds of small villages among populations that were predominantly Christian. They call themselves Beta Israel (lit. ‘House of Israel’). Formerly, they have been referred to as ‘Falasha’,a term which they view as derogatory. There are different theories regarding the origin of Ethiopian Jews. According to one of them, Ethiopian Jews migrated to Egypt after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586BCE, then a few hundred years later moved to Sudan. From there they continued to Ethiopia and settled in a region known as Qwara. According to this legend, Ethiopian Jews have lived in Ethiopia for more than 2,500 years. Others argue that the history of Jews in Ethiopia is much shorter. For more on the history of Ethiopian Jewry, see Kaplan (1992) and Quirin (1992). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004359543_003 jewish amharic 9 According to Appleyard (2003), Ethiopian Jews historically spoke an Agäw (central Cushitic) language that belonged to the Kǝmantnäy (Qimant) dialect cluster; the dialect was variously known as Fälašan or Qwaräñña. (See Leslau 1951: xx–xxi; Hetzron 1976; Appleyard 1994, 1996, 1998; and Zelealem 2003 for details; see also the account of early travelers and missionaries like Bruce 1790 and Flad 1866). According to Berry (2010), Ethiopian Jews spoke Qwaräñña per- haps until the 19th century. In the Gondar administrative region, it was com- pletely replaced by Amharic, while in the north it was replaced by Tigrinya. By contrast, all religious texts of the Ethiopian Jews are written in Geʿez. Geʿez (also known as ‘Ethiopic’ or ‘Classical Ethiopic’) is the oldest attested Ethiopian Semitic language, was the official language of the Aksumite Empire, and re- mained the primary written language of Ethiopia into the 19th century. No longer a spoken language, Geʿez survives only as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel community. The Amharic spoken by Ethiopian Jews was not different from their Chris- tian neighbors from the point of view of phonology, morphology, and syntax. The differences lie solely in the lexical domain, and even these are quite minute. Such lexical differences usually emanate from religious differences between Ethiopian Jews and their Christian neighbors. Ethiopian Jews refrained from words which are related to Christianity; for example, they avoided the Amharic phrase የማርያም ፈረስ yä-Maryam färäs ‘(type of) grasshopper’ (lit. ‘Mary’s horse’) because of the Christian associations, replacing it with የሙሴ ፈረስ yä-Muse färäs ‘Moses’s horse’. Similarly, while Orthodox Christian Amharic speakers congrat- ulate a woman recovering from childbirth with the expression እንኳን ማርያም ማረችሽ ǝnkwan Maryam maräččǝš ‘it is good that Mary has pardoned you’ (based on a widespread tradition among Orthodox Ethiopians to call on the name of Mary during labor; Baye 2007: 120), Ethiopian Jews use the expressions እንኳን በሰላም ተገላገልሽ ǝnkwan bä-sälam tägälaggälš ‘it is good that you were relieved peacefully’ or እንኳን እግዚአብሔር በሰላም ገላገለሽ ǝnkwan ǝgziʾabher bä-sälam gälag- gäläš ‘it is good that God has relieved you peacefully’. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the large-scale immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, and at present approximately 137,000 live in the country. Of these, most speak Amharic, while a small minority speaks Tigrinya (Shohamy and Spolsky 1999: 244); however, almost all Tigrinya speakers are bilingual in Amharic. In addition, speakers of other Semitic and Cushitic Ethiopian lan- guages, such as Oromo, Soddo (Kǝstane), Wolayta, and Sidaama, also immi- grated to Israel during this period, usually because of family ties. Amharic language use in Israel varies according to age group. Roughly 40% of Ethiopian Jews living in Israel were born there, and nearly all of them.

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