The formative period in Amharic studies

1. GRAMMATICAL STUDIES The most complete and detailed descriptive grammar Amharic, the African Semitic tongue which is the national language Ethiopia, is Marcel Cohen's TraitS de langue amharique (1936) and its supplement Nouvelles etudes d'eViiopien meridional (1939). Indeed, these two works marked the culmination century Amharic grammatical study, which may be termed the classical period in Amharic studies. It is with this formative century grammatical work on Amharic, 1840-1940, that this section briefly concerns itself. We restrict ourselves here, however, to book-length grammars. Short grammatical sketches and outlines are treated by Leslau 1965: 199-204. The first scientific grammar Amharic actually dates from 1698. We refer to Job Ludolf's Grammatica linguae Amharicae. This 59-page work was far ahead [its] time, and [its] author must be reckoned among the greatest Semitists any period. (Ullendorff 1961: 15. For some recent discussion Ludolf's life and work, Fellman 1976.) The effect this work, however, soon spent itself in Europe, and only after hiatus some 150 years was work begun afresh on Ahmaric in the middle the nineteenth century. This, then, actually begins the century Amharic studies explained above. The pioneering work was done by two missionaries to Ethiopia, the German Karl Wilhelm Isenberg, who published competent 184-page Grammar the Amharic Language in 1842, and the Italian Guglielmo Massaia, who published in 1867 501-page combined Amharic and Galla grammar entitled Lectiones grammaticales pro missionariis qui addiscere volunt linguam Amaricam seu vulgar em Abyssiniae, nee non et linguam Oronionicam seu populorum Galla nuncapatorum. (For some recent discussion on these two pioneer linguists, see Fellman 1978 and Fellman forthcoming a.) Twelve years later one the high points in Ahmaric linguistics was reached with the publication in 1879 Franz Praetorius's 523-page Die amharische Sprache, work of which Semitic linguistics can be proud (Polotsky 1964:107). Even today, century later, this ouvrage fondamental (Cohen 1936:4) can be read with profit. As if to balance this magnum opus, ten years later Ignazio Guidi published succint 64-page Grammatica elementare delta lingua amarica, a model accurate and succinct formulation which . . . still affords the quickest and most effective

Amharic · Ancient history · Art · Formative assessment · Geography · Linguistics · Mathematics education · Period (music · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology

• The Ethiopians

  S H Longrigg•International Affairs•1960

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• Job Ludolf (1624–1704) as the Founder of Ethiopic Studies in Europe

  Jack Fellman•Historiographia Linguistica•1976

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• An Annotated Bibliography of the Semitic Languages of Ethiopia

  Wolf Leslau•Journal of the American Oriental…•1968

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• The beginnings of African Linguistics

  Jack Fellman•African Studies•1978

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