Colloquial Amharic (Colloquial Series) 1st Edition

This is the best grammar and learning resource for Amharic that I've seen yet and I think I've seen most of them. Easily worth the price. The accompanying recordings are nice but in no way essential, in my opinion, as long as you have exposure to native speakers. (However, having someone to talk with is indispensable, so if you are trying to learn in the absence of native speakers, yes, by all means get the recordings!)My main complaint with this book is the idiosyncratic presentation of verbs, which are the hardest part of learning this language. A GREAT addition would be a list of fully conjugated verbs, e.g. as an appendix. As it stands, verb tenses and classes are introduced piecemeal throughout the text and never fully summarized. You'll have to do that on your own. Still, despite these deficiencies, the book has a very systematic deconstruction of the language and is hugely useful. My copy is dog-eared from much travel over the course of several years in Ethiopia.

Good Series.

Best resource for learning Amharic as far as I can tell. Be sure to get the audio cds that go with it.

This book is only helpful if you buy the audio as well. It gives you a good foundation for the pronunciation of vowels and consonants. Plenty of exercises to help build confidence. I will review further after I have a chance to use in Ethiopia.

Amharic is a beautiful language which is also very difficult to learn. Even coming from a background of having studied other Semitic languages (principally Arabic) very little is familiar and beginning study of it will be heavy, slow going.This book, while it contains much material of absorbing interest and a good treatment of the complex grammar of Amharic, nevertheless does not give a beginning learner nearly as much help as it might. Although the writing system takes a great deal of time to learn, there are no examples of handwritten Amharic provided and the quality of printing is not good enough to figure out the correct methods of writing the letters.Although Amharic contains consonant sounds totally unfamiliar to English speakers (the ejectives), no guidance is given as to how to form these sounds. Also, many grammatical forms are introduced in the lessons before the author gets around to explaining them- making the dialogues in early lessons less inane than in many other beginning books, but also creating unnecessary confusion. The glossary in the back does not indicate when consonants are doubled- this is not shown in written Amharic, but it is nevertheless phonemic, and the doubling could be indicated using a transliteration. All of these are minor omissions, but isn't there an edition of this book available with CDs? Without them,this course is hardly worth trying.

This purchase was a good deal. Affordable pricing and arrives in a timely manner. Well done.

I agree completely with Heather's review on this item. I too am going to visit Ethiopia shortly and wish to at least try to converse with the people there on their terms and not those of an American tourist. Americans tend to think when they visit another country that everyone should speak English. Since I didn't want that I bought this CD. It only gives you just a few words to learn in each lesson and then goes into full conversations that include the few words you have just been given. You are then expected to take the part of one of the conversants and know enough to at least reasonably keep up with the conversation. Totally impossible even though at the end of each lesson they tell you what the most proper response might have been. I also have the book, and No, Heather, it does not help at all. The book does not even have a decent English to Amharic glossary or word list. What it does have is an Amharic to English glossary. This does you absolutely NO GOOD unless you can read Amharic in Ge'ez which is the script that they use in Ethiopia. But don't worry. On the CD they do read the Ge'ez abugida, (ግዕዝ አቡጊዳ)or alphabet to you. ALL 238 letters or symbols of it for whatever good that might do for you. Keep your money. I found several free downloads on the internet that help you MUCH more than this!!

This is a really nice book, well thought out. I enjoyed it. Although i didn't expect to seriously pursue Amharic, this book will immerse you in the language and basic pointers on Ethiopian culture, the dialog is not dry and while the grammar is tough to say the least, once you get the hang of how it works its not too bad.for instance, to say i have the money,if you are a male you will say genzebun allegn.genzeb being money, "alle" the word for to be, then the suffixgn like the ny sound in onion , to me there is money. and so thats how amharic is,everything is affected by the gender and person.you follow this british guy named peter on his adventures in Ethiopia and you meet his friends Kebede, Hirut and he picks up a girlfriend too named Tsehay. It gets increasingly difficult, and the abugida is not as terrifying as it looks.Its a meat and potatoes kind of book, so delve into this eloquent ancient language and have fun. tiru idul! good luck. i would also recommendlonely planet's amharic phrase book, it will make things even easier.

Good, without question. However was unable to get the CD which it said was available. You really need to have the CD to get the sound of the words as putting your own interpretation on the English spelling in more often than not wrong. Suggest you do not purchase until you know the CD is either with it or is available, then order the CD first.

日本全国探してもこれに匹敵する本は他にありません。イギリス人が書いてるので解説など全部英語ですが、中学校1年ぐらいで習う英単語が中心なので、そんなに難しくないように思えます。惜しむらくは7000円（イギリスのお金の単位では24ポンド）とやや高めの値段ですが、世界で唯一、かつ最高水準のアムハラ語攻略本という点を考慮しても、★5個に値するはずです。駅前とかにあるなんとか外国語学校にうっかり通っちゃうことを考えると、本物のエチオピア人の発音が聞けるので十分に元は取れるはずです。帰国後、これの日本語版を作ったら億万長者になれそうな気がします。