አማርኛ
Language Facts:
Speakers: 57 million
Family: Semetic
Status: Official in Ethiopia
Family: Semetic
Status: Official in Ethiopia
Script: Ge’ez
- The first step to learn Amharic is to learn the writing system. Amharic uses an abugida, so that each character represents a syllable of a consonant plus a vowel. The system is very logical, with each character consisting of a base consonant with an added .
- Nouns have two gender and can be singular or plural. The are four noun cases.
- Amharic verbs, like most Semitic languages, use a complicated system of root consonants in which vowels and suffixes are then added for tense, person, gender , aspect and mood. Speakers and learners of other Semitic languages like Arabic will be somewhat familiar with the system.
- Basic word order is Subject-Object-Verb.
Learn Amharic:
Books:
Colloquial Amharic – large book with many dialogues and useful vocabulary
Youtube:
Amharic Fairy Tales : over 160 videos with Amharic stories with English subtitles.
Learn Amharic : many simple lessons.
Online:
Anki – link to an Anki deck with ~1000 words, with English and audio.
FSI – a very old but very free course from the Foreign Language Institute. It’s presented in a fairly dry manner, but for a language without too many mainstream resources, this can be a huge resource with a lot of material.
Italki – has a few tutors to learn Amharic. An online tutor is a great resource to progress quickly with Amharic.