Adoption Bookshelf: Amharic 101 (Among Other Things...)

Amharic 101 (Among Other Things...)

Continuing the trend of Ethiopia-related posts (sorry to adopters from other countries, but I've got Ethiopia on the brain lately!), I wanted to point out a couple neat resources I've stumbled upon for learning Amharic.

For those who don't already know, Amharic is the "official" language of Ethiopia. Note its distinctive Ge'ez alphabet, as pictured on the side of the elusive, Olympic-edition Ethiopian coke can featured to the left. (Side-note: I spent 30 minutes squatting in the Wal-Mart soft drink aisle, searching for Ethiopian coke cans, and ultimately had nothing to show for it but dirty jeans. To all of you who did find the Ethiopian cokes, I envy you your charming coke cans and clean pants.)

But back to the matter at hand...Amharic is spoken by about 17 million of Ethiopia's roughly 80 million citizens. So although it's the country's official language, by no means is it the only language spoken there. Tigrinya and English are also spoken widely, as well as numerous other languages and dialects. In fact, I've read about a few parents who adopted older children from Ethiopia and were surprised to find that the kids spoke only a few words of Amharic (their native languages were Tigrinya and Oromo, as I recall).

All that to say that if you're adopting from Ethiopia, there's no guarantee your children will speak Amharic fluently. But most likely they'll know at least a little bit. And even if they don't, you may want to consider learning Amharic anyway (or at least a handful of phrases) for the sake of your travels in Addis Ababa.

(Note: at this point, I must remind myself that this is supposed to be a short post. Thus, I will not even begin to address issues like learning language for the sake of maintaining your child's culture or to help facilitate future contact with your child's family members in Ethiopia. Clearly, those ideas deserve more cogent thought than this post, which was intended to be more of a "hey!-check-out-these-cool-links!" post than a "hey!-let's-try-to-parse-all-the-ethical-ramifications-of-international-adoption-and-how-it-will-change-every-aspect-of-your-daily-life-and-culture!" post. Seriously...let's all do the parsing on our own for today. I'm trying to write this before bed!)

So...ummm...hey! Check out these cool links!

First, for those wanting to know just the basics, Straight Magic (an adoptive mom of ridiculously cute Ethiopian twin girls) has a great post on the bare bones of Amharic. Written by an authentic Habesha (who was nice enough to point this resource out to me!), this is one of those posts that you think, "Wow! I will totally use that! But maybe not right now, when I'm trying to get ready for bed..." For this reason, I recommend bookmarking it. This post's a keeper.

And for the more linguistically ambitious among us, there's always the old reliable: the Foreign Service Institute's (FSI) Amharic course. The FSI courses remain about the best language-learning programs around, especially for those languages too obscure for Rosetta Stone to write software about. The downside? FSI courses cost a LOT ($200-$300 is not pocket change to me, especially when trying to finance an adoption).

The upside? Someone has put the older version of the FSI Amharic course--which is now in the public domain--online...for free! Whoever took the time to upload all these tapes and books, thank you! The Southerner in me proclaims, "Bless your heart!"

And if you're interested, you can find a whole slew of other FSI language courses online at the same site. So this post does pertain to other adoptive families, after all! You can learn Bulgarian, Cantonese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese...even Igbo and Kituba, two languages that I don't think I've ever before heard of in my life. (Although, on an interesting side-note, when I googled "Igbo," the first website that popped up was for the International Gay Bowling Organization. Funny, I didn't know that gay bowlers have their own language...)

Anyway, before this post gets any more hallucinogenic, I am going to bed. I'll leave the meatier stuff--language learning, ethics, the intersection of gay bowling leagues and Nigerian languages--to worry about tomorrow. Goodnight for now!

2 comments:

Blog Shmog said...: Hi,
For some reason I am just now seeing your comment on my blog. I posted about Ethiopian music a long time ago and didn't notice you left a comment. Thanks so much for the links! It's really helped in my music search!; September 9, 2008 at 11:58 PM
Kimberly said...: You're very welcome, and I'm so glad it helped! Just left a more detailed comment on your blog... =); September 10, 2008 at 1:52 AM