Re: [NATLANG] Amharic and Irish help

I'm sure I've seen a Colloquial Amharic book in the public library in
Nottingham... have you checked Amazon?

>Mark J. Reed wrote:
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>>I'm trying to learn some Amharic
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>Ah, that's a language!
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>>so I
>>already got to practice my all-but-completely-forgotten Russian on him...)
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>Then you are one more candidate for a russophone Conlang workshops I'm going
>to create one day...
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>>On the web, resources seem to be lacking.
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>Yes, they are very scarse. Fortunately, I have a copy of printed Amharic
>grammar essay - feel free to ask (better privately).
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>>I did find a guide to the
>>phonology (using SAMPA, even), but the mapping is only to the Amharic
>>abugida, and there seem to be a variety of Roman transcription systems in
>>use which I'm somewhat at a loss to decipher.
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>Yeah, that's a problem. Even more sophisticated sources use different
>transliteration schemes.
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>>For instance, the travlang.com Basic Words list gives
>>"Amessagganalehugn" for "Thank you".   Are the doubled consonants
>>geminate?
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>There is gemination in Amharic, it is not marked in writing, it's phonemic
>status is not clear, but those consonants are definitely geminates.
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>>What am I to do with final "gn" - is that /gn=/ or a
>>Romancish transcription of /J/?
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>This is a more or less traditional rendering of /J/.
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>>Both |a|
>>and |e| appear with macrons; did Ge'ez have phonemic length?
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>Ge'ez did have. Amharic has none.
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>>Perhaps
>>an |a| with macron is [a], vs unmacronned [6], while macronned |e| is [e],
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>vs
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>>unmacronned [@]?
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>Ge'ez > Amharic:
>/a:/ > /a/ ; /a/ > /E/ ; /e:/ > /e/ + palatalization of the previous
>consonant; /e/ > /@/.
>/@/ is colored differently in different environment, and is realised as /I/,
>/U/, /i\/ or /@/.
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>>Thanks in advance.
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>You are welcome.
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>-- Yitzik
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