Colloquial Amharic: The Complete Course for Beginners

Colloquial Amharic: The Complete Course for Beginners has been carefully developed by an experienced teacher to provide a step-by-step course in Amharic as it is written and spoken today. This third edition offers new and updated vocabulary and key revisions to the text to reflect changes in language and culture.

Combining a clear, practical, and accessible style with a methodical and thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Amharic in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Each unit presents a wealth of grammatical points that are reinforced with a wide range of exercises for regular practice. A full answer key, grammatical tables, and a glossary can be found at the back, as well as useful vocabulary lists throughout.

Key features include:

• A clear, user‑friendly format designed to help learners progressively build up their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills
• Jargon‑free, succinct, and clearly structured explanations of grammar
• An extensive range of focused and dynamic supportive exercises
• Realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of narrative situations
• Helpful cultural points explaining the customs and features of life in Ethiopia
• An overview of the sounds of Amharic

Balanced, comprehensive, and rewarding, Colloquial Amharic is an indispensable resource for both independent learners and students taking courses in Amharic.

Additional resources and audio material to accompany the course are available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills. Additional information on writing the Amharic script can also be found here.

David Appleyard is Professor Emeritus of the Languages of the Horn of Africa at the University of London, UK. He taught Amharic there for just over thirty years and has published extensively on various Ethiopian and Eritrean languages, as well as on Amharic literature and traditional culture.