The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia: A Comparative Phonology

Edward Ullendorff's The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia, A Comparative Phonology, published by Taylor's Foreign Press in 1955, is a specialist linguistic monograph comparing the sound systems of the Ethiopian Semitic languages, Ge'ez, Amharic and their relatives, against the wider Semitic language family. Ullendorff was a leading scholar of Ethiopian Semitic languages. Its strength is rigorous comparative phonological analysis by a recognized specialist, still cited in Ethiopian Semitic linguistics. Its relevance here is specific: it documents the phoneme mergers within Ethiopian Semitic languages that make several letters of the fidel script, Ge'ez and Amharic's writing system, sound identical in modern received pronunciation despite representing historically distinct sounds. Its limit is that it is a technical linguistic study, not a source on the religious use of Ge'ez as a liturgical language, which needs a separate source addressing that use directly.