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The languages of Ethiopia refers to the various spoken forms of communication in Ethiopia. It includes the nation's official languages, as well as its minority and foreign languages. ==Overview== There are 88 individual languages of Ethiopia according to Ethnologue,〔(''Ethnologue'' page on Ethiopian languages )〕 with the 1994 Ethiopian census indicating that some 77 tongues were spoken locally. Most of these languages belong to the Afroasiatic family (Semitic and Cushitic; Omotic languages are also spoken, though their classification is uncertain). Additionally, Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by the nation's Nilotic ethnic minorities. Of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, 86 are living and 2 are extinct. 41 of the living languages are institutional, 14 are developing, 18 are vigorous, 8 are in danger of extinction, and 5 are near extinction.〔 Charles A. Ferguson proposed the Ethiopian Language Area, characterized by shared grammatical and phonological features in 1976. This language area (''sprachbund'') includes the Afroasiatic languages of Ethiopia, not the Nilo-Saharan languages. In 2000, Mauro Tosco questioned the validity of Ferguson's original proposal. There is still no agreement among scholars on this point, but Tosco has at least weakened Ferguson's original claim. English is the most widely spoken foreign language and is the medium of instruction in secondary schools and universities. Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by local languages such as Oromo and Tigrinya. After the fall of the Derg regime in 1991, the new constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia granted all ethnic groups the right to develop their languages and to establish mother tongue primary education systems. This is a marked change to the language policies of previous governments in Ethiopia. In terms of writing systems, Ethiopia's principal orthography is Ge'ez or Ethiopic. Employed as an abugida for several of the country's languages, it first came into usage in the 6th and 5th centuries BC as an abjad to transcribe the Semitic Ge'ez language.〔Rodolfo Fattovich, "Akkälä Guzay" in Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: A-C''. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz KG, 2003, p. 169.〕 Ge'ez now serves as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Other writing systems have also been used over the years by different Ethiopian communities. These include Arabic script for writing some Ethiopian languages spoken by Muslim populations〔(Alula Pankurst|Pankhurst, Alula]]. "Indigenising Islam in Wällo: ajäm, Amharic verse written in Arabic script." Proceedings of the Xlth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa 1991. 1994.〕〔(Andreas Wetter on Arabic script for writing Amharic )〕 and Sheikh Bakri Sapalo's script for Oromo.〔Hayward and Hassan, ("The Oromo Orthography of Shaykh Bakri Saṗalō", ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'' ), 44 (1981), p. 551〕 Today, many Cushitic, Omotic, and Nilo-Saharan languages are written in Roman/Latin script. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Languages of Ethiopia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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