Customer Reviews

Dictionary Amharic-English English-Amharic

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It must be said at the outset, this dictionary is not different than the fine one produced by Amsalu Aklilu (AA).

For those not acquainted with AA's dictionary, all entries are given in the traditional Ethiopian syllabary, with a phonetic pronunciation. Entries are alphabetized in a way that treats vowels and consonants as equally important, different than Leslau's or Kane's dictionaries, where vowels are taken into account only if there are words that have the same consonants.

The definitions are very brief and include very, very few secondary senses.

The book contains a number of entries not found in Leslau's dictionary. Those who want to work with Amharic will benefit from having a dictionary produced by an Ethiopian, but if they already possess a copy of AA's, they will not want to duplicate their purchase by buying a copy of both this one. If they do not have AA's yet (not readily available outside of Ethiopia), then this is a good choice.

This dictionary is good if you want to translate words from English to Amharic. Based on one of the reviews I was under the impression that it was the other way round.

It would have been better if there was an Amharic "transliteration" of the English words. For instance, an Amharic speaker should be able to look up for a word in Amharic, and that should be translated into English (in the English script) along with the transliteration (in the Amharic script). Basically the Ahmaric speaker should be able to state the English translation even if she/he cannot read English.

This is good for someone learning English that speaks Amharic already. This book is not recommended for someone learning Amharic. An English speaker is not going to be able to read the Amharic letters.

If you can read in Fidel or Geez and the English script, this book is for you. The book offers definitions in both scripts.