Amharic, the official working language of Ethiopia with over 50 million speakers, [1] is a Semitic language written in the ancient Ge'ez script (Fidel). Somali, a Cushitic language spoken by over 20 million people in Somalia, parts of Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya, uses the Latin alphabet since 1972.
While Amharic belongs to the Semitic language family and Somali to the Cushitic family, both are part of the broader Afro-Asiatic language superfamily. This distant relationship, combined with centuries of cultural exchange in the Horn of Africa, has created unique linguistic connections between Ethiopian and Somali communities.
The Horn of Africa region has historically been a crossroads of trade, migration, and cultural exchange. Ethiopia and Somalia share not only a long border but also intertwined histories, with significant Somali-speaking populations in Ethiopia's Somali Region (Ogaden) and Ethiopian communities throughout the Somali territories.
Our free translation tool serves the diverse communities across this region, supporting cross-border communication, business interactions, humanitarian efforts, and personal connections between Ethiopian and Somali people, both in the Horn of Africa and in diaspora communities worldwide.
Our translation software provides high-quality translation results for free, as it uses Google’s powerful translation API to instantly translate sentences between Amharic and Somali. You can use our tool to translate up to 5000 characters per request—and the good news is, you can make unlimited requests.