BFSU Opens the Country's First Amharic Language Program

Beijing Foreign Studies University held anopening ceremony for its Amharic language program at Sir Shaw Run Run Buildingon the morning of November 9 and Mr. Tesfaye Yilma Sabo, Minister Counsellor atEmbassy of Ethiopia in Beijing was among the participating officials. Thestudents from School of English and International Studies, School of Russia,School of BFSU European Languages and Cultures, School of Asian and AfricanLanguages, Arabic Department, as well as the graduate students from theDepartment of African and Asian Languages and Cultures at Peking University,and BFSU graduates working at Xinhua News Agency attended the first class afterthe ceremony.

Amharic is the second-most spoken Semiticlanguage in the world, after Arabic, the official working language of theFederal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and spoken by nearly one hundredmillion people. This is the third African indigenous language programs at theuniversity and the other two are Swahili and Hausa. The BFSU is currently theonly university in mainland China teaching Amharic.