Discovering the Amharic Language
The Amharic language is spoken by the Amhara ethnic group primarily located in the central highlands of Ethiopia. The Amhara comprise approximately 30 percent of the population, with approximately 27 million speakers.
More than 7 million people also speak it as a second language. It has been the working language of government institutions, the military, and of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, whose roots date back to the 5th century of the Common Era if not earlier.
In addition to Ethiopia, Amharic is also the language of several million emigrants which now reside primarily in Egypt, Israel, and Sweden. Increasing numbers of Ethiopians and Eritreans have also emigrated to the United States in recent years.
Semitic languages, of which Amharic is one, represent a family of languages spoken by more than 300 million people across the Middle East, North Africa, and the horn of Africa. After Arabic, Amharic is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world.
Amharic is written in the Ge’ez alphabet. As in many languages, there is no agreed upon manner of transliterating the Amharic language into Roman characters.
I found that there are a limited number of materials available for learning the Amharic language. You may want to check out Talk Now Amharic.
