41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, could be much better, February 18, 2005
There are not many choices for Amharic self-taught lessons, this is likely the best for the price range.
FSI, Colloquial, Lonely Planet Phrase Book (Amharic ONLY), the Lonely Planet Travel Guide book (Amharic and Tigrinya- spoken in the North of the historical route- Tigray, Axum city) and Talk Now. There are a few online resources.
FSI, Foreign Service Institute, is complete, as in all languages.
Expensive, but provides 26 tapes and a 500+ page textbook. For learning the complete language it is the best starting point, fastest way and best method. For complete learning Colloquial should be added as a 2nd choice. It is more practical and offers good grammatical explanations (if you already have a basic grasp of the grammar and how it is used through FSI)
The more you hear (listen) to Amharic the better. Exercises are good, but listening to learn is much better. The Amharic wording is somewhat long. Lots of suffix, prefix, and add-on's to basic root/stem words. prefix ZZZ(root word- verb or noun)YYY suffix
doctor Indiyayuwat
Indi (aya)u wat = that the doctor sees her
The root verb is aya (seeing), but it is lost in the pre-suffix.
That is one of the difficulties of quickly recognizing questions and being able to quickly answer. It also means that it is very difficult to learn ONLY by being exposed to the language, you need the many grammar rules even for basic sentences. The difficulty is of course in the use of the grammar rules, listening-speaking. Drills are an effective method here.
For English only speakers:
I would guess that 10% of Amharic is easier than learning French
10-50% is equivalent in diffulty to French
50-85% more difficult than French, but manageable
15% MUCH more difficult than French for an English speaker
The problem is that none of courses offer a solution to the needs of the learner.
If you are travelling, short duration visit:
Lonely Planet Phrase Book is probably the worse and best choice. With no tapes, as it is currently offered, this is the worse offering. One needs to hear Amharic. The simplicity of the Phrase Book is good and is the best place, even the serious student, to beging learning, IF you can get the text read in Amharic on tape.
Colloquial is a course that is/was offered in London for somewhat serious students of the language, not travel. For the price, I think it is the best option for the traveler (because of the tapes), although not intended for travel.
This Colloquial provides 2- 60 minute tapes with a ~350 page textbook. ~2500 word glossary in the back. If you want to learn in depth you will need a dictionnary, but the glossary is enough to get you through the book...beginner, ~intermediate?
It is a great reference but crams in far too much material too quickly. It tries to do a beginner and intermediate course for the begginer. Possible Yes, difficult and time consuming for the learner...YES.
From the author:
Amharic is a rich and often complex language, and to be able to pick up a novel, or even a magazine or newspaper article and read it without difficulty does take several years of intensive practice.
The goal of the book/ lesson is to manage: read, write and especially converse in everyday Amharic.
You need the audio tapes, IMPOSSIBLE without.
In 10-20 hours(without hearing the language), I still don't thing you can order food, basic greetings, hotel, taxi, conversations, etc. I seriously doubt. (You can read it while speaking, but remembering and using is another story) Picking out words (not sentences) is quite easy. As a tourist stick to English and some basic words (much easier than building sentences) which you can learn IF you hear them.
Extented stay and you want to learn more than absolute basics:
Lonely Planet phrase book (get it read on tape for you) is a good place to start.
FSI it the best resource to learn Amharic. You will learn to speak the language best and fastest using this method. Pricey, shop around and look for resources on the net of FSI. But if you really want to spend the time learing, it is worth the $$.
The problem with FSI is that it is academia structured. It is not practical, effective, time-friendly. It is design to be used in a class setting, not self-learnt. The same goes for Colloquial.
FSI is VERY heavily front loaded with material that follows the academic learning path. You need to know a lot of grammar and how to use it to build even easy sentences (10-50-85% range earlier mentionned). Lonely Planet will only get you 0-10%, but very useful, and some basics beyond, but not much more. Therefore, FSI front loads as much information to be mastered early on (front loaded). Great in academic theory, but not logical nor time efficient (practical) without extensive class room assistance. 100 hours of learining Q&Answers of a single chapter 8 of 50 for example-is not out of the question to master the material. The earlier material needs to be known, but not so soon and at that level of difficulty. It can be learnt in 1 hour at a later stage with far more logic and simplicity with a better command of the language introduced at a latter stage.
For anyone that is using or plans to use FSI, it is the best resource, but the planning and introduction of the material is just not logical. Academia planned (on paper)= poor actual effective usage for the student and it sticks to the rigid formula until the end. It's all there, but not well presented for the learner. Early chapters are a 9 to 9.95 on 10 in difficulty level. Later chapters 30's... 2/10 difficutly range. Not many learer's will ever get to chapter 30's, because of the difficulty of earlier chapters. To make matters worse the information in the later chapters is the information you will need on a daily basis as a speaker. The difficult material, although let me emphasize that it is needed, is not material you use on a daily basic. The easy-mid range you will constantly use the difficult material you will seldom use, still needed.
After completing the early, difficult, time consuming, not that useful FSI chapters, you still won't be able to make or use the simplest of sentences. You will be able to make up the few basic sentences you learnt, but to use or recognize a general (formulaic) constuctions to sentence that will help learn the difficult material, not to mention to actually speak the language (the goal) FSI will NOT do that unless you get though the whole course. If it were better stuctured, the exact same material, in my opinion only, I truly believe (I would bet a lot of $$ on a sample of a 1000 students) a 5:1 or ever 20:1 learning time savings can be achieved. 5 to 20 times faster for the self-taugh student. After spending that much time learing the first 12 chapters of 50, a student should be able to build-up basic sentences, it is not the case here. It makes sense on paper to need to learn the early parts so soon, but practiclly it does not make sense at all. Amharic is really not that difficult, the material provided just makes it seem that way.
The class room setting would of course move things along much faster and guide the student through the difficult earlier chapters. Still not very well presented even for a class setting, in my opion. I can not do better, but someone that knows what they are doing can easily do better.
What I suggest:
If you are going to Ethiopia as a tourist and you want spend 5+ more hours learning a little. Buy Colloquial, Almaz and Hirut voices are worth the cost alone. BYW, both FSI and Colloquial, the voice are very clear and better pronounced than street talk speed. Colloquial is only slightly more Colloquial in speech, the linking of 2 words as 1 (very quickly) and very occasionally not fully pronouncing the words (as is done in any language Colloquially) is used.
If you don't want to pay the price and have little time. Buy the Lonely Planet. You can TRY reading the book while saying hello or I want a beer. You most likely won't sound at all like what it should, because you haven't heard it (on tape). BUT, the Ethiopians will probably smile and appreciate the effort nonetheless and know what you mean.
If you want to learn the complete language and quicker than Colloquial...go with the FSI.
If you want to get some basics and to learn more in-depth in Ethiopia (on location learning). Colloquial is more than enough. If you want to learn faster and can afford the FSI, that's the best choice.
In Summary, you won't learn Amharic in less than 10 hours for a trip. Colloquial is good enough to give you a starting point to read a magazine, newspaper or listen to the radio- IF (and that is not easy at all) you are capable of finishing the course.
You will learn faster and in more depth with FSI, but you will pay more and still probably (most likely) won't be fully fluent unless you read and listen to Amharic extensively.
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