A Little Language Lesson.

I was looking through boxes in the garage the other day and I came across a stack of papers from our life in Ethiopia, including some of our books from language school.

Our main text was a booklet called Amharic for Beginners, put together by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission Language School. Here’s a look at one of the basic grammar lessons:

Looks like fun, right? We also had some exercise books to help us learn and practice our vocabulary. These three were produced and printed at SIM Press, where we went to school – they were originally designed to be used by Ethiopian adults who are learning to read and write Amharic.

 

The one in the middle is a simplified version of the Gospel of John. The other two are picture books for learning the fidel. Here’s the page for the “b” sound:

On the left hand page you see the “b” sound in its seven different forms, each associated with a different attached vowel sound. You can tell which vowel sound to used by how the first form character – in this case, the croquet hoop – is amended. So first form is the consonant plus a schwa sound, “bə”, which is used in the word for sheep, “bəg.” The second form, with the little arm sticking out to the right of the croquet hoop, is the consonant plus “oo”, used in the word for coffee, “boo-na”. The vowel sound for third form (with the flat right foot) is “ee”, for fourth form (with the longer right leg) is “ah”, for fifth form (with the circle on the right foot) is “ay”, and for seventh form (with the longer left leg) is “oh”. But what about sixth form you say? The one with the little arm on the left? That’s a tricky one. Depending on context, a sixth form character can be pronounced either with a short “i” sound or as the absence of a vowel sound. It’s used here in the word for money, “birr.”

To make matters trickier, differently shaped characters are annotated in different ways, so the various forms of “b” are not congruent to the various forms of, for example, “r”.

One of our friends helped us memorize the different forms of each character by singing them to the tune of “Camptown Races”:

Bə boo bee bah bay bih boh

Doo-dah, doo-dah

Tə too tee tah tay tih toh

Oh, doo-dah day…

On the right hand page is a series of questions and answers: What is this? This is a house. What is this? This is a sheep. What is this? This is coffee. We practiced these sentences over and over again with our language helpers. Turns out, being able to ask, “What is this?” is very helpful when, say, you are eating something you’ve never seen before.