Amharic Challenge አማርኛ

My main motivation for learning languages is to learn about other cultures. Today I met a very nice family from Ethiopia. Actually, I almost knew nothing about this country. I only knew that their language is Amharic and I asked them to teach me how to say "good-bye" in Amharic and when I came home, I decided to do an Amharic challenge. This is kind of game of mine, that I invented a month ago. I choose a language, that I haven't learned yet and try to write a simple text and upload it on italki (a language teaching and exchange platform) to get corrections. That doesn't necessarily lead to me actually learning the language, but I get a glimpse of the language and the culture. I did that with Italian, Romanian, Polish and Odia (= Oriya) already. Italian was very easy because I know Latin and also a bit of French and Spanish, but Odia was challenging because it has its own script (initially I also couldn't figure out, how to use the Odia keyboard) and there are not so many learning resources for learning Odia available online. Odia isn't even available in Google Translate (which I don't use for writing texts anyway because the translations are often not very reliable). So, Odia made it to the list of languages that I do want to learn and I'll later write more about it, but back to Amharic first.

With Amharic as an example, I'd like to describe my writing challenge step by step:

The Keyboard

Install the right keyboard on my computer. My computer has a touchscreen so I can type other scripts, without needing to learn an input system. But I will resort to sometimes copy and paste letters or even words if I just can't find the corresponding letter on the keyboard. Odia is a real challenge there because it has many combined letters. Also, the Amharic keyboard wasn't self-explanatory. I yet have to figure it out.

The Resources

I look for easy resources for the language, that grant me a quick overview. For many languages, I can just use an online dictionary (I like the ones by Pons and Langenscheidt) and a verb conjugator. Together with a website, where the basic rules of the language are explained, it's enough for me to put together a very simple text in an instant.

But if it is a language, for which resources for Western learners aren't easy to find, I have to get more creative. This is what I used for Amharic (and for Odia):

Omniglot: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/amharic.htm
Omniglot is always a good start for any language. It offers information about the script, useful phrases, and links to other resources.

Learn 101: http://learn101.org/amharic.php
Learn 101 offers basic vocabulary and phrases for more than 100 languages.

Glosbe: https://glosbe.com/en/am/, https://glosbe.com/en/all-dictionaries
This online dictionary claims to offer almost every living language and a lot of examples. It's been very useful for Amharic, but just in order do check their claim, I tried out the English-Busuu dictionary and that seems to be empty.

The Music

That's the most important part. Whenever I write a text in a foreign language I listen to music in this language. This way I get a feel for the language and often find something that spurs my interest for the language and culture. Here is part of my Amharic playlist:

Teddy Afro - Ethiopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsrL9Rz-A5A
Teddy Afro is one of the most popular singers in Ethiopia. He has poetic lyrics, in which he also criticizes the Ethiopian regime between the lines.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Afro)

Getish Mamo - Tekebel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BdzfKYo7Z8
In this video, you get a glimpse of the traditional Ethiopian dance style Eskista, on which actually the internet meme Harlem Shake was based on. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskista)

Selamawit Johannes - Bel Jalo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpGyQ6ro_wc

This video was filmed at the location of  Fasil Ghebbi, a UNESCO world heritage and pictured on top of this post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasil_Ghebbi). And there's more of the Ethiopian shake dance.

Niway Damtie - Suke Dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndH9A58Xdp4

This song has the right music for a summer hit and the right moves. It has the same potential like Macarena or Gangnam style. What a pity, that we missed out on this song in Germany!

Jano Band - Darigne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyHALnmGr5A
If you are looking for rock music with an Ethiopian touch then this is your fix. More about Jano Band: http://www.audioinferno.com/2016/09/28/ethiopian-group-jano-band-nominated-for-best-african-rock-music-group-in-afrima-3-0/ .

The Result

So, here's the text that I wrote in Amharic. It is really very simple because I didn't have much time.

ጤና ይስጥልኝ።ስ ሜማርያም ነው።እኔ ከ ጀርመን ነኝ።እኔና ባሌ ከ ቻይና ነው።አማርኛ አልናገርም።እንግሊዘኛ፣ጀርመንኛ እና ቻይንኛ እናገራለሁ።ከአርባ አንድ ዓመቴ ነው እና ሦስት ልጆች አሉኝ።

The translation is: Hello. My name is Miriam (= Mariam). I'm from Germany, My husband is from China. I don't speak Amharic. I speak English, German and Chinese. I'm 41 years old and have three kids.

What's next?

Ethiopia is definitely an amazing country. It's the place from where Homo Sapiens started off and it's also the place of origin of the coffee bean. Amharic is only one of ninety languages spoken in Ethiopia, but it's the working language in Ethiopia and second most spoken Ethiopian language after Oromo. It's script Ge'ez is one of the oldest alphabets still in use in the world and also used for other languages like Tigrinya, which is the third most spoken language in Ethiopia and also spoken in Eritrea. In recent years the numbers of refugees from Ethiopia and Eritrea have been rising. Eritrea is next to Syria, Iran, Iraq and Somalia one of the countries, from which refugees have good prospects of being allowed to stay in Germany ("gute Bleibeperspektive"). So, that's what's on my to-do-list:

• reading more about Ethiopian and Eritrean history and culture
• doing a Tigrinya challenge
• learning to speak some basic Amharic phrases: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLearnamharic