Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with Akkadian writing beginning in the middle of the third millennium BC.
A number of Gurage languages are to be found in the mountainous center-south of Ethiopia, while Harari is restricted to the city of Harar.
All Semitic languages exhibit a unique pattern of stems consisting of "triliteral" or consonantal roots (normally consisting of three consonants), from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed by inserting vowels with, potentially, prefixes, suffixes, or infixes.
The South Semitic languages include Epigraphic South Arabian; Modern South Arabian (or Modern South Arabic), a group of six languages spoken in eastern Yemen, southwestern Oman, and the island of Socotra; and Ethiopic.
Both are official languages of their respective countries, while Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for Christians there.
A number of Gurage languages are to be found in the mountainous center-south of Ethiopia, while Harari is restricted to the city of Harar; Tigre, spoken in the northern Eritrean lowlands, has over a million speakers.
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