South Arabic and Geʿez

Abstract It is generally admitted that South Arabic and Ethiopic languages are closely related and form a dialectal unity within the Semitic languages. The South Arabic presence in the North of Ethiopia is well attested and vice‐versa. The later Axumite dominance in Yemen is evidenced by reliable sources. Even though South Arabia and Ethiopia were connected from a political point of view, Ethiopic is not an offshoot of the South Arabic. Geʿez, the classical Ethiopic, shares some phonological and morphological characteristics with a part of the South Arabic languages, mostly with the Epigraphic South Arabic, but there are significant differences between them.