It’s pretty interesting. People often talk about northern Ethiopia like its language history is uniform, but it actually followed two very different paths.
Geʽez (a Semitic language) was the old language of places like Aksum, and in Tigray you get continuity:
Geʽez → Tigrinya (same Semitic family, gradual development)
But in places like Gondar, Lasta, and Wag, earlier populations were largely speaking Agaw (Cushitic) languages, not Semitic.
When Amharic spread into these regions, it didn’t evolve from those languages. It replaced them over time in many areas.
Amharic is especially associated with Shewa, and a lot of its spread northward is tied to the expansion of political power from central highland regions like Shewa under the Solomonic state. This was gradual and uneven.
The shift likely involved centuries of contact, bilingualism, local Agaw influence on the Amharic that developed there, and partial survival of Agaw languages (like Qimant)
So it’s not just “Agaw → Amharic” as a straight line—it’s more like:
Agaw base → long contact → gradual shift to Amharic (linked to expanding state power from the south/Shewa)
Meanwhile:
Tigray kept a continuous Semitic linguistic tradition rooted in Geʽez.
At the same time, Amharic became a widely shared language across different regions, sometimes alongside local languages, and in some places replacing earlier ones.
Pretty cool!