Talk:Ethiopia

Holidays

The "Holidays" table is certainly only for one specific year, as many of the Christian and Islamic holidays are movable feasts. This should be stated somewhere!

• Well, I've made an attempt at it, making a note of holidays that vary from year to year. So this calendar will work for the rest of 2005. Also, I was not sure what Mulud (May 2) is (a Google search indicates it might be an Indonesian holiday). I have removed this, at least for now. -- Gyrofrog 04:43, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

History

The historical section only includes the most recent events. Someone should summarize the earlier history. --Shallot 12:24, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Secular state

I'm confused by this statement:

Ethiopia is the oldest secular state in the world.

Was Ethiopia ever a secular state before the Derg era? And then this is immediately followed with:

Christianity was officially adopted...

- Gyrofrog 05:27, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• See "Clean up" section below. I reworded this and moved it to "Demographics." - Gyrofrog 23:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Clean up

Someone placed a "Clean up" template here and so I've made an attempt to clean up the first paragraph. Some of the information seemed a little specific for the first paragraph, considering there are specific sections in the article (which themselves contain links to more specific articles). I moved some information to the "Geography" section and some to "Demographics." I wasn't really sure what to do with this:

Even then, much of the country never gave way to the occupying power, and groups of rebels (known as Patriots) continued to fight a guerilla war against the Italians. The Italians were ousted in 1941 with the help of the British Army.

...but I didn't think it really belonged in the introductory paragraph, which is why I've removed it (for now). The article still needs a lot of work, though. - Gyrofrog 23:23, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Anuzutica

Hello. An anonymous editor has created an article Anuzutica and linked to it from Ethiopia and Derg. This is a prank, right? Maybe someone who is a regular editor of Ethiopia can comment. Thanks in advance for any information. Regards and happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 16:56, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I am almost positive that it's a prank (and I feel like a chump for qualifying that with "almost"). I'm nominating Anuzutica for deletion. - Gyrofrog 20:08, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• • Thanks for following up. I'll take a look at the vfd listing. Wile E. Heresiarch 21:48, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• This is a troll and "Anuzutica" is a hoax. This person has also repeatedly vandalized Help:Contents and Wikipedia:Community Portal.

Date of independence

Ethiopia's date of independence sure is attracting a lot of attention. Specifically, various individuals keep deleting it. We went through something similar a month or two ago when the date kept going back and forth from 1941 (defeat of Italian forces) to 1944 (Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement). The December 1944 date would seem to be official, and this is cited within the article (twice). Unless someone can provide a good explanation as to why this date is incorrect, the article should use "December 1944." Otherwise I, for one, will continue to revert edits if I see the date changed or deleted. I have left comments on the talk pages of those who have made such edits over the last couple of days. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:51, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And speaking of the date of independence, should the relevant sentences be moved from the introductory paragraph down to the "History" section? Maybe just mention something like "except for the Italian invasion" in the first paragraph, and move the specific info to "History." IMHO it seems a little weird to have a citation in the first paragraph (and I do think we should keep the citation). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:05, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think there's a bit of nationalistic pride mixed with a plausible claim here -- it all depends on how you interpret the Italian interlude: should one see it as a period of colonialism, admittedly delayed 50 years from the height of the colonial movement; or should it be seen as one more occupied country in the way several European countries were occupied by Axis Powers during World War II? There is evidence to support either view.

Ethiopia could be said to have fallen into the same catagory as, say Sudan or Morocco, where a European power absorbed an internationally-recognized polity by placing a thin layer of foreign beauracrats & military over a local elite who were self-identified with that polity, & in many ways continued to run things. For both of those countries, European control was an interlude which merely suspended, but did not change, the dynamics within that country prior to annexation. If this is the case, then one could say that Ethiopia did have a "date of independence", & it needs to be defined.

On the other hand, a number of countries were effectively occupied or absorbed in the manner Ethiopia was, & re-emerged after WW II. Examples would be Czechoslovakia, Austria, & I believe Thailand (by the Japanese). As Thailand would show, not all Occupied Countries were in Europe. In this case, then the question of a "date of independence" is moot. Is there a "date of independence" for, say, the United Kingdom?

As I understand it, Ethiopians are very jealous -- & rightly so -- over the possession of the longest recorded continuous history for any country in Africa -- excepting, of course, Egypt. But to support this claim, some contrary details get overlooked; for example, there is a lengthy Dark Age between the end of the Axumite Kingdom (circa AD 700) & the beginning of the Zagwe dynasty (either AD 950 or 1150). This jealousy does not allow a dispationate consideration of the question whether Ethiopia actually ended in 1936, & therefore whether there was a "date of independence". -- llywrch 21:37, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

True, I didn't want to have the date there, as it only pertained to 8 years or so out of several centuries. But when the original 1941 vs. 1944 dispute came up, the case for the latter seemed pretty clear. I suppose one option (perhaps the most neutral of all?) is simply to omit the Date of Independence from the infobox entirely. This has been done with both the France and Japan articles, for example (though I'm not sure of the specific reason for the omissions where those 2 are concerned). That way, let the reader see the details for him or herself while reading the actual article. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:12, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Another approach would be to put the date in with a footnote explaining the controversy, perhaps with a reference to the place in the article where it is addressed. That way, the date is included, but the reader is made aware that there are other views. Ground Zero 22:20, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

External links and references

Does anyone else think that the list of external links is becoming unwieldy? I think the list could be pared down but I'm not sure where to begin. There also seems to be some jockeying for the "pole position" where some links are moved further up the list, which I assume is to gain visibility. I've been trying to keep the "CIA Factbook" and "Maps of Ethiopia" links near the top, as these are actual references (or in the former case, a primary source) for the article itself. Perhaps these two should go under the "References" section instead, and just alphabetize the rest? And speaking of "References," this section was deleted a while back. I've since restored it, as it contains a "Works cited"-style reference (the only one for this article, thus far). Specifically, that citation is for the date of independence (see above, "Date of independence"). I thought if it was included in the article, there might be less modifications/deletions of that date (again, see above). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:01, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Independence

As far as I know, Ethiopia was never a British colony, so how could it gain independence from Britain in 1944, as the article states?

It was an Italian colony taken by the British in WWII, they would have occupied and administered the country til 44--nixie 11:56, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Languages

A paragraph with links on the languages of Ethiopia is needed.

There is now a partial list. I have a question about languages, though. I'm under the impression that the Amharic language is no longer the sole official language. However, I doubt that all of the languages are official. Anyone know for certain? I bring this up because of an edit that occurred to the Somali language article. There were some mistakes, but the editor did assert that Somali is one of the official languages in Ethiopia. I assume this is true, at the very least in Somali Region. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 5 July 2005 18:55 (UTC)

What this page needs

this article needs a COMPLETE list of all the ethiopian ethnic groups. unfortunately, i don't know near all of them myself, so i can't contribute this to the article. Gringo300 07:42, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ethiopian names

As I understand it, Ethiopians do not have family names. In other words, the Ethiopian historian Taddesse Tamrat's proper name is a compound noun with a space in it, like "ice cream". Since this is based on materials 20+ years old, is this still the case? Should we have an "Ethiopian patrol" to fix this mistake where we find it? -- llywrch July 1, 2005 18:55 (UTC)

Eras B/CE vs. BC/AD

Two anonymous editors have changed the eras from the earlier CE to AD. First 132.24.126.26 (talk · contribs) [1] on Jun. 8, 2005, and now today, 81.19.57.146 (talk · contribs) [2]. Both changes were made without edit summaries, and neither adds anything except perhaps a specific POV to the article. Since the original usage [3] was CE, I am, in keeping with what I believe is the least POV way to approach this, at least until the argument about the proper use of eras is settled, reverting both to CE, pending explanations for why they were changed. Tomer ^TALK July 5, 2005 19:49 (UTC)

How do I see the Amharic?

Amharic just shows up like this on my computer: ??????????????????? just a bunch of question marks. How do I download the font? Revolución 18:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I found this link at the Amharic Wikipedia. I can't remember which one I used, I think it was GF Zemen (under the "TruType") section (that was for the Mac - I think I got Virtual Ge'ez to work in Windows). What type of computer are you using? (It might make a difference.) --

Thank you! 66.177.138.113 23:35, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Gyrofrog (talk) 19:17, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Amharic is a stupidly difficult font to find; I got a few of them from around the net, by Googling for Amharic truetype unicode font, and eventually one worked. Try Gyrofrog's first. :) --Golbez 20:47, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Technically it's Ge'ez or Ethiopic, as other languages (Tigrigna & Tigre, to name only a couple) use the same writing system (analagous to our use of the Roman alphabet). Finding the font is not as hard as getting it to work. I gave up trying on my older Powerbook (still running Mac OS 9). Typing the language is another story - I remember seeing an Ethiopic typewriter - and I assume there is some way to map a regular computer keyboard to the font. Kind of a moot point as I can barely read it anyway! ;-) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:31, 11 July 2005 (UTC)