Ethiopia is one of the few countries in Africa with its own indigenous alphabet.

The Ge’ez script, also called Fidäl, originated in the Horn of Africa more than 2,000 years ago and is still used today to write Amharic, Tigrinya and other languages. Most languages across Africa are written with the Latin or Arabic alphabets, which makes Ethiopia part of a small group of nations using a script of native origin.

Amharic is Ethiopia’s official working language, but the country is linguistically diverse, with more than 80 languages and an estimated 200-plus dialects spoken across its regions.