The Beauty of Ethiopian Culture

I wanted to learn about a culture located in Africa, so I chose the Ethiopian culture. Often time’s people have a negative perspective on the Ethiopian culture. They feel that the only people who live there are starving and disease infested. However, Ethiopia has a beautiful culture filled with richness in art, language, religion, and ethnicity. Ethiopia is about the only country in Africa that has never been colonized and their people take pride in their struggle to keep their independence. 

There are three major types of people that live in Ethiopia. The first groups of people are the Amhara. The Amhara people dominate about one third of the population of Ethiopia culturally and politically. These people live in the central highland plateau of Ethiopia populating the provinces of Begemder and Gojjam and parts of the Shoa and Wallo. Many of the population are native speakers of Amharic, which is the language of the Amhara. 

The Galla (Oromo) people are the second group of people that I would like to talk about. They dictate most of the population in Ethiopia taking up nearly 40 percent all together. These people are pastoral and agricultural, living mainly in central and southwestern Ethiopia. 

The Shankella, people are only a small percent of the countries’ population. They take up a small six percent and live in the western part from the border of Eritrea to Lake Turkana. However, these three groups are not the only people living in this country. The Tigrean, Sidamo, Somali, Afar, and Gurage also take up portions of the population. 

The Ethiopian culture holds many dialects including Amharic, Tigrinya, Orominga, Guaraginga, Arabic, Somali, English and other languages. The languages spoken in this country add up to about 80. Many of the languages come from families such as the Semitic, Nilotic, Hamitic, and Omotic. The Amharic and Tigrinya languages use the Ge’ez script that holds 231 letters. Children start to learn English from junior high school up.