Initia Amharica: An Introduction To Spoken Amharic

The author was a civil servant in the AngloSudan government and a linguist specialising in African languages. After visiting Ethiopia on diplomatic missions in 1906 and 1907, he published this three volumes reference work on colloquial, spoken Amharic between 1908 and 1920. His study of Amharic was one of the first to be written in English, and exemplifies the shift among linguists away from the formal, classicsbased style of earlier reference grammars towards a focus on colloquial speech and communication. The examples are drawn from direct knowledge of the contemporary language, unlike similar works of the period which were often based on centuriesold Ethiopian Orthodox biblical texts. The words and phrases in this work have been taken down from the mouth of natives. As many as possible of the phrases are such as have been said spontaneously, i.e., are not the products of crossexamination. The Abyssinian, like other members of partially civilised peoples, or uneducated individuals of highly civilised races, does not always speak naturally when questioned by a stranger. If he has had no education of any kind he experiences the same difficulty in answering enquiries concerning the language he unreflectingly uses as would, in similar circumstances, an uncultured European. Volume 2, published in 1910, is an EnglishAmharic vocabulary, with guidance on pronunciation and idiomatic Amharic translations of English phrases and sentences. This book has immense value in the context of this language.