How To Greet Someone In Amharic

Never stop learning; For when we stop learning, we stop growing.

Loyal “Jack” Lewman

Hello Everyone, Welcome to the first lesson. Today I will talk about the basics of Amharic and also the format of all my blog posts.

All the blog posts I do will have the same format. I will start the blog by talking about what we will be learning for that day and then quickly move on to the lesson. I don’t like making my introductions too long since I want to get into the lesson quickly. After I talk about the words we will be learning about for the day, I will have a video teaching you how to pronounce these words. In my videos, I repeat the word 2-3 times. It’s is recommended that you say the words with me and pause the video to repeat the words several times. I also recommend having a notebook so that you can write down all the notes. It’s best that you write down these notes as “he who writes learns twice” After the video, I will leave a link to my Quizlet class. On Quizlet, you can play games and test yourself on the new vocab words. Remember to learn the language you will have to put in the work. Amharic isn’t a hard language, but it is a language the demands practice, so be willing to put in 10-15 minutes practice time for Amharic each day. If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments or contact us. So now, without further ado, let’s get started with the lesson!

Lesson

Amharic is a gender-based language. Verbs will change their endings based on the gender of the person receiving the action. This is entirely different from English as the verb stays the same for both genders. Amharic also has a formal and informal ending of a verb. The formal ending will be used when talking to older people. When I say older, I am referring to people 60 or above. It is considered disrespectful if you use the formal version when talking to someone young. This rule is just something you need to put in your brain, as this is crucial. Today I will not focus on the formal version of a verb. I will leave that off for now until we master the female and male version of the verb.

Welcome:

Hello:

ሰላም ( selam)

How are you?

I’m fine:

ደህና ነኝ (dena negne)

What’s your name?

My name is:

የኔ ስም… ነው (yene sem … new)

When you see the ellipsis, you would add a word in. For example, my name is Madeline so I would say yene sem Madeline new.

Where are you from?

I’m from…

እኔ ከ … ነኝ (ene k … nenge)

Please

Thank you

አመሰግናለሁ (ameseginalehu) Both genders

I would use this verb for thank you because it works for both genders. There is a female and male version. The male version would be (ameseginhalehu), and the female version would be (ameseginishalehu).

Bye:

ባይ (bye)

Ciao:

ቻው (ciao)

This would be a simple version of how you would greet someone in Amharic. Next week I will talk about the days of the week as well as the numbers. If you have any questions, be sure to let me know in the comments below.

Video

Practice

Click the button below to practice the new words.