Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Ethiopian Amharic Phrasebook

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We went on holiday to Ethiopa and brought this book with us. It turned out to be a very useful. The book is pedagogically constructed and you can quickly find what you're looking for. As a tourist you get a good insight of the countries culture and social behaviour. I recommed this book to everyone who is planning to go to Ethiopia on holiday or try to learn Amharic at home.

Although this pocketbook is helpful for beginners it has one big mistake: phrases and words are written in Amharic letters (which is a good thing) but the authors were really careless when they proofread the book. In many cases the word (or phrase) written in Amharic does not correspond to it's English translation ... which leads to misunderstandings as soon as one uses the book for nonverbal communication (and that was the idea behind the usage of amharic letters)!

This book is excellent! I don't understand some of the reviews.
It is a rare book that promotes Ethiopia and its culture. It is intended for foreign travellers to Ethiopia and not for Ethiopians who live abroad. I have travelled to Ethiopia with this book and found it very useful. I don't know what I would have done without it. I found the cultural info very useful. I think no other phrasebook offers this kind of info.

This guide is terrible if your goal is to speak Amharic. The Achilles heel of this book is that there are no accent marks on the ethiopian phrases. If you read what is in the book there is no way you will come close to saying anything intelligible. On the positive side, all of my Ethiopian friends found this book very helpful for learning English.

This phrasebook has lots of useful grammatical information. However, many of the examples are literal translations of the English. The results are phrases that are not good or natural Amharic. Instead, they teach you how to sound like a foreigner. Though there is an Ethiopian listed as one of the authors, it is clear that he felt pressured to produce a prodcut that was close to the English.

I'm married to an Ethiopian and have found this book to be a lifesaver each and every time I go to Ethiopia. The book gets you close enough to the correct pronunciation that anyone can half way understand you and correct your pronunciation of the words. Although Tigrinyan's are now in power Amharic is still the national language of Ethiopia so it's better to learn Amharic if you plan on speaking to anyone in Ethiopia.

I bought this book with me the first time I ever went to Ethiopia. It actually wasn't very helpful to me in helping me speak Amharic and there were a lot of mistakes that were pointed out to me in the book. However the fact that the words are also written out in Amharic are most helpful because you can always point to the word if you have trouble and someone will be willing to help you pronunciate the correct word in Amharic. If you want to learn some very basic words then this book is good. However if you want to speak phrases or sentences, that book does not exist just yet. This book also does a good job of telling basic facts about the culture which was very helpful to me during my first trip to Ethiopia. Overall I'd say that it is a good book and was well worth my money. I would say that others also enjoyed this book because when I left Ethiopia I could not find my book ;-)

This is a helpful phrasebook, usable without any previous knowledge of Amharic. As I am not a native English speaker, I appreciate the way the sounds used are described in the beginning of the book. It is well organized, with different, logical, chapters; i.e. the possibility to find the phrase I am looking for in the chapter where I think it should be is high. The dictionary part is short (as it of course has to be), and I really miss "please" as a word in the dictionary.

Actually I didn't use the book very much, as my surroundings were almost all English or Oromo-speaking. Before spending much time on a learning a language to use in Ethiopia, be sure to check out the location. Since the Amhara's are no longer the dominant tribe, their language may be less useful. Tigrayans are now in power and Oromo are the largest language group.

I was able to impress my Ethiopian friends many times with lessons and tidbits from this book. It was actually useful, fun, and easy to use. It features very practical information about a language and culture that is otherwise difficult to access.