Installing and Using Amharic Software in Windows 7

Microsoft recently released Windows 7, which included Amharic and many other African languages. I did cover that story in my post, entitled, “Microsoft to Release Windows 7 in Amharic, Ethiopian National Language, and Nine Other African Languages“, which you can read by clicking here.

I have not upgraded to Windows 7 yet, so I don’t have a personal experience to write my own review on how the system works and how good or bad it is.

Because many people have shown a great deal of interest in the Amharic system, I did a little bit of research and have found the following information:

Microsoft to Release Windows 7 in Amharic, Ethiopian National Language, and Nine Other African Languages

Ethiopia, the second most populous nation in Africa (after Nigeria) has a population of 80 million this year (2009). There are 84 languages (these are totally different languages) and more than 200 dialects in Ethiopia. However, Amharic remains Ethiopia’s national language. It is estimated that 50% of the population speak Amharic (as first language and second language speakers).

Although Ethiopia is one of the oldest nations in the world, its languages did not develop fully to express scientific words and phrases. Many attempts to translate text books into Amharic failed miserably.

So, English remains the primary business language of Ethiopia; and all subjects are taught in English from grade 7 and above, including colleges and universities.

Until recently, Geez fonts were not available in Microsoft Office packages. We had to buy and download the fonts from Ethiopian programmers’ websites. The idea of buying Geez fonts has made me very upset over the years. Mind you … when all the rich nations were getting free fonts, but poor Ethiopians, other Africans and Asians were subjected to really expensive charges just to get fonts.