Word for the Travel Wise (05/01/06)

It’s time again to turn our attention to Africa lands to enhance our world vocabulary. This time we head for the third time to the horn of Africa to Ethiopia for today’s word and a very useful word it is today. If you’re headed to Ethiopia anytime soon I’m sure it will come in handy somewhere.

Today’s word is a Amharic word used in Ethiopia:

ameseginalehu
– (pronounced ame-segi-na-lew) thank you

Amharic is the second most Semitic language in the world after Arbaic. It is the official working lingo of Ethiopia and spoken in such places as Egypt, Israel, and Sweden by a number of emigrants. The writing system called abugida is based from the now extinct Ge’ez language. In addition to Amharic other widely spoken languages in the country include Tigrinya, Somali, and Arabic to name a few.  Wikipedia has good background information on the lang if you’re at all interested, but for those ready to dig in here’s a couple of places to learn online.

Ethiopian Restaurant dot com was kind enough to include some basic Amharic to use while in a restaurant from which I pulled our word for the day. This a great starter to days of the week, numbers, asking for your bill and other small useful phrases. Listen online to KFAI radio for Amharic broadcast out of Minnesota. Check their schedule for program times and listen daily as a self-learning tool. African Language has Amharic software for purchase and Amazon has a number of books for purchase including the Amharic LP phrasebook.

Past Amharic words: qurse, shuruba