 The Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common among linguists specialising in Ethiopian Semitic languages.Amharic has been the working language of courts, language of trade and everyday communications, the military, since the late 12th century and remains the official language of Ethiopia today.As of the 2007 census, Amharic is spoken by 21.6 million native speakers in Ethiopia and 4 million secondary speakers in Ethiopia.