Just in case anyone comes to this thread and hasn't seen our poll in the Hebrew forum, please check out this poll that will help us decide what to do with the Semitic languages.
Please vote!
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semiticlearner wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Yep, I'm still learning it! It's going pretty slowly but steadily enough IMO, especially given that I'm studying about 24 other languages at the same time. I think there must be some reason why only the Ethiopic languages seem to have ejectives whereas all the other Semitic languages apparently have pharyngeals.
May be neighbouring language influences
What are you finding easy and hard in Amharic so far? Most say ejectives are hard although I don't think that's the case
Here you go. Wrote it for you. Hope you like it!absarshah wrote:Hi. My first interaction with Amharic was 3 weeks ago in a record store. The song “Tezeta (Slow)” by Gétatchèw Kassa was playing. It reminded me of summer. Of a time and environment I had only heard of. I could picture my home country, Pakistan, in the 60s, on a hot summer day with hot winds blowing in the streets. I could picture the empty streets, where even the children don’t play outside. I could picture people lying in the verandas while someone sprinkled cool water on the dust outside in the street.
My first instinct was “I’m gonna share this with my dad”, he would have loved this song. Unfortunately my father had passed away late last year. I ended up buying the record and listening to it on repeat. Research tells me Tezeta is a song about memory and nostalgia. Talk about coincidence eh?
Could someone please share the lyrics here in Roman script, as well as the translation? It would really mean a lot to me…
Thanks in advance!
Babelfish wrote:Welcome Mehitabel! I'm afraid I don't see any ሐበሻ or other Amharic-speakers here... hopefully we'll have some in the future, this will make learning the language easier
Regarding pronunciation, you're probably confused not only b/c of IPA but also b/c of Amharic having lost some sounds from Ge'ez, resulting in different letters often being pronounced identically. So:
ሀ, ሐ, ኀ - h (maybe more like German ch, Greek χ, I'm not sure)
ሠ, ሰ - s
ጸ, ፀ - ts
You might want to check out this page, it shows the sounds for Amharic, Ge'ez and many many other writing systems.
Brzeczyszczykiewicz wrote:If anyone's still around, could you please tell me how many syllables does Amharic currently use?
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