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Colloquial Amharic
Colloquial Amharic is the essential guide to learning this beautiful language. Specially written by an experienced teacher for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Amharic. No prior knowledge of the language is required. What makes Colloquial Amharic your best choice in personal language learning? * interactive - with lots of exercises for regular practice
* clear - with concise grammar notes
* practical - with useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
* complete - includes answer key and special reference section. By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Amharic in a broad range of everyday situations. Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials Pack.
* clear - with concise grammar notes
* practical - with useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
* complete - includes answer key and special reference section. By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Amharic in a broad range of everyday situations. Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials Pack.
- GenresEthiopia
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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January 29, 2019
For the English speaker wishing to learn Amharic - a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia - there is a dearth of good choices when it comes to instructional material. This book and tape set, which I used during a private reading in college, is probably the best option.
The book is divided into fourteen lessons, each of which contains a number of passages in Amharic, the transcription of those passages, a list of vocabulary, a discussion of grammar, and a selection of exercises. An Amharic-English glossary is included at the back.
Pronunciation is a significant challenge with any foreign language, but I found this to be particularly the case with my Amharic studies, and although I had (and have) the benefit of being taught by native speakers, I cannot imagine purchasing this text without the accompanying tapes.
My only real complaint lies in the brevity of the introduction, which introduces the student to the Amharic abugida (a term which derives from the first four letters of the Ge'ez script) - a segmental writing system used both for Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) and modern Amharic, and consisting of 276 fidäl (characters/letters). This writing system presents something of a daunting prospect to the student accustomed to a 26-letter alphabet, and should perhaps have been explored more fully.
The book is divided into fourteen lessons, each of which contains a number of passages in Amharic, the transcription of those passages, a list of vocabulary, a discussion of grammar, and a selection of exercises. An Amharic-English glossary is included at the back.
Pronunciation is a significant challenge with any foreign language, but I found this to be particularly the case with my Amharic studies, and although I had (and have) the benefit of being taught by native speakers, I cannot imagine purchasing this text without the accompanying tapes.
My only real complaint lies in the brevity of the introduction, which introduces the student to the Amharic abugida (a term which derives from the first four letters of the Ge'ez script) - a segmental writing system used both for Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) and modern Amharic, and consisting of 276 fidäl (characters/letters). This writing system presents something of a daunting prospect to the student accustomed to a 26-letter alphabet, and should perhaps have been explored more fully.
Displaying 1 of 1 review