Amharic is an official working language of Ethiopia and is written in the Ge'ez script. It is the mother tongue of the Amhara people and is widely used as a lingua franca across the country.
Amharic belongs to the Ethio-Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Its writing system, often called fidel, developed from the ancient Ge'ez script. Unlike an alphabet that assigns one basic symbol to each consonant or vowel, fidel uses syllabic characters whose forms indicate vowel patterns.
Amharic is not the same language as Ge'ez. Ge'ez is an ancient language that remains important in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, while Amharic is a modern spoken language. Tigrinya also uses a related form of the Ge'ez script, which can cause confusion.
Amharic has a major role in Ethiopian broadcasting, education, government, and literature. Ethiopia’s federal system also recognizes several other working languages and regional languages.