In which country is Amharic an official language?

Amharic is spoken as a first language by the Amharas and as a "lingua franca" by other populations residing in major cities and towns of Ethiopia. The language serves as the official working language of Ethiopia and is also the official or working language of several of the states within the Ethiopian federal system.

Amharic is written left-to-right using a system that grew out of the Ge'ez script, called, in Ethiopian Semitic languages, "Fidä" — "writing system", "letter", or "character" or "abugida" — from the first four symbols, which gave rise to the modern linguistic term abugida. There are 33 basic characters, each of which has seven forms depending on which vowel is to be pronounced in the syllable.

Although the oldest extant records in Amharic are songs and poems dating from the 14th century CE, significant literature in any quantity did not begin until the 19th century.

There is no agreed way of romanising Amharic into Latin script.