Amharic was until the 14th Century a relatively unimportant local dialect of the south of Ethiopia.
However it became more important as a result of the move of the Royal residence to the south.
Originally Amharic was purely a spoken language.
After Old Ethiopian died out, the Ge’ez alphabet it used was modified and used for Amharic.
Although Amharic is a Semitic language, it is written from left to right and is a syllabic language.
The vowels are depicted by annotating consonants.
The pronunciation of Amharic is however quite distinct from other Semitic languages.