It’s a seven-minute song. Although I love it, I don’t expect you to listen to the whole thing. But can you give me a general idea what the topic is?
Also, if anyone happens to know, what is the cool one-stringed instrument featured in this vid? And who is the (extra suave) accordion player?
I just want to say that I’m going to be really impressed if we have a poster here who speaks Amharic.
John Mace: Well, in light of my past posts asking sundry questions about the Ethiopian language, you are certainly not mistaken – but why is that, I wonder?
We have thinking people here who are fluent in all kinds of other languages – why not Amharic?*
*I may be mistaken about the spoken language of Ethiopia? Perhaps it’s not Amharic?
It looks and sounds like a njarka, anyway - I recognised it straight away as I’m a big fan of West African music. However, Ethiopia is right over on the other side of Africa, so it may well be called something else in East Africa, which is a very different a far separated culture from West Africa.
Ethiopia is a rather weird case. Amharic is the official language because the Amhara region is where the Orthodox principalities of highland Ethiopia coalesced to create a unitary state and conquer the rest of modern Ethiopia.
But it is not the majority language - in fact it is #2 to Oromo. The Oromo people are actually the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, but even they only represent a plurality( 35-40% of the population, compared to maybe 27% Amhara ).