The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia and their Contribution to General Semitic Studies

Opening Paragraph I Propose to examine in this short paper, in the very limited time at my disposal, some of the ways in which a study of the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, ancient as well as modern, can and should be of use to our understanding of general Semitic linguistic phenomena and to a clearer appreciation of inter-Semitic relationships. At present we shall be concerned with the aid extended by Ethiopics to other languages rather than with the Ethiopian tongues at the receiving end, so to speak; with their active rather than their passive capacity, though I should not wish to pretend that it is always possible, or even desirable, to disentangle the two. In a minority of cases only can we detect a direct ‘influence’ of Ethiopic on other Semitic languages, i.e. impact at a time when these tongues were already fully differentiated from each other. Generally, the value of Ethiopian languages lies in their having preserved a feature lost elsewhere, or a root that has otherwise disappeared, or in revealing a parallel that may be significant to an assessment of general Semitic affinities.