A Totally Different Language

I've been doing a bit of reading on Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. I find the whole study of language and communication so fascinating. While Amharic is not the native language of the region where Hanna is from, it is the national language which is the primary language for about 12 million Ethiopians and the second language of about 1/3 of the total population. The interesting part is that Ethiopia has 63 million who speak 82 different languages with over 200 dialects. I find this so incredibly rich.  By the way, Amharic has 231 characters!

From what I have been able to discover, the village where Hanna is from probably speaks Tembarissa which is a dialect of Kambaata. There are approximately 82,000 people who speak that dialect according to Ethnologue.com. Kambaata is a Cushitic language (named for Cush from the Bible, with the predominant languages being Oromo and Somali) whereas Amharic is a Semitic language (named for Shem from the Bible, similar to Hebrew, Aramaic or Arabic). Both of these languages are subgroups of the same category of Afro-Asiatic language. Here is Genesis 1:1-5 in Kambaata.

So, what's all of this mean...I just find it terribly interesting. It is one thing to hear it spoken and something totally different to see it written. Imagine, Hanna is coming to us with this incredibly rich history of language which very closely resembles that spoken by the Israelites and Jesus Himself. I find it so fascinating and rich to ponder.

By the way, in case you're curious...Here is Hanna's name in Amharic as well...or at least as far as I can tell :)  
 (Hanna Tessema Shannon)