I'm trying to master verb conjugation in Amharic and I'm confused as to how many tenses there are. I know that there are 10 personal pronouns in Amharic and that in English there are 12 tenses, with the 3 types of time (past, present, and future) and 4 types of actions (simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous). How does this translate into Amharic? How many tenses are there and what are the rules to conjugate them?

For example if I take the 1st person singular pronoun in English - I (when subject) or Me (when object), that translates to እኔ/እኔን. Using the verb in the infinitive form መብላት (to eat), how are all the possible ways that this can be conjugated?

My understanding is that there is only one way to conjugate in the past, and that it is uniform among almost all verbs. However I get confused on present and future because a lot of verbs don't follow the same rules, and where continuous plays into this. If someone could explain it would be appreciated.

The 10 pronouns I'm referring to (in the subjective form):

1st person singular - I - እኔ

2nd person singular, male - you - አንተ

2nd person singular, female - you - አንቺ

2nd person singular, respectful - you - እርሶ

3rd person singular, male - he - እሶ

3rd person singular, female - she - እሷ

3rd person singular, respectful - they (gender neutral) - እሳቾ

1st person plural - we - እኛ

2nd person plural - you all - እናንተ

3rd person plural - they - እነሱ

On a side note, am I correct in believing that these pronouns become objective when you simply add a ን to the end?

Could anyone please help me with the name written here?

https://preview.redd.it/q4o30efosktc1.png?width=725&format=png&auto=webp&s=e52ee9e1dd4bcfb544b0926473a885cd3919822f

How do you from a sentence in the simple past tense, simple present tense, simple future tense, continuous past tense, continuous present tense, continuous future tense, perfect past tense, perfect present tense, and in the perfect future tense?

I am sorry for the big question but I can not find any information online.

Maybe this question is repetitive but I'd be grateful for anyone who can provide some help. I am currently learning fidel and struggle with differentiating sounds, especially the h. There are 3 hs which sound exactly the same ( ሀ - ሐ - ኀ). And then there's a repetition of the sound at the 4th variation

( ሃ - ሓ - ኃ) If I pick up new words in future, do I have to look up all six versions of them? The same goes for ሠ and ሰ.

Dear everyone,

I apologize for the inconvenience I may have caused the last few days when this sub was temporarily banned.

I am not sure what the issue was but I went back and approved old posts that I thought should not have been flagged as spam, but this may have tripped Reddit's anti-spam alarm. Or perhaps I promoted this subreddit a bit too much (on only three other subreddits!).

I am a new moderator so I am still learning the quirks of Reddit.

Hello, everyone, I am the the new moderator of this subreddit. As my gift to this sub, I have linked some learning resources here.

If you are on PC, the new resources will be in one of the menus on the right. If you are on mobile, tap the "See more" text under the name of the sub on the main subreddit page.

I hope you will appreciate them, as we continue our Amharic learning journey together (I'm a beginner too).

If you have any resources that you think are excellent, leave them in the comments and I can add them to the list.

አመሰገናለሁ

a me se ge na le hu

Thank you

i tried using a website i saw linked but the translator didn’t work for some reason. i need the following sentence translated

“i have a doctors appointment tomorrow at 10”

thank you to everyone that helps

I have an Amharic speaking student and want to give her some translations for some vocabulary words: relieved, furious, embarrassed, nervous, ecstatic.

Every online translator app seems to give me totally different results each time and I want to make sure it’s accurate for her. Thank you in advance!!

Hello, I’ve been working at learning Amharic for just a month now and have been having a good time. On /r/languagelearning, the users place a large emphasis on comprehensible input and recommend guided readers for early learners to help learn the language. I think I might have a good enough grasp to read some very simple children’s books or books designed for A1 Amharic learners. Does anyone have free or paid examples? Thank you. :)

ከሸክላ አይሰራም ፣ ከሸክላ ፈጽሞ አልተሰራም ።

For context, from Wikipedia:

“The closed central unrounded vowel ⟨ə⟩ /ɨ/ and mid-central vowel ⟨ä⟩ /ə/ are generally fronted to [ɪ] and [ɛ], respectively, following palatal consonants, and generally retracted and rounded to [ʊ] and [ɔ], respectively, following labialized velar consonants.”

In David Appleyard’s book Colloquial Amharic, he essentially says the same changes occur, but says that they occur both when palatals or w come before AND after these vowels. I trust Appleyard more than Wikipedia, because for instance ነሽ is produced as [nɛʃ] rather than [nəʃ] even though here the vowel actually precedes the palatal consonant.

My question then is, if these two vowels are affected by consonants on either side of them, palatals or w, what happens when they have a palatal on one side and a w on the other? Which takes precedence?

For example: ወይዘሮ - wäyzäro. Should this be [wɛjzəro] or [wɔjzəro]? This is just one example but there are lots of others.

Thanks

Addon for getting subtitles from yifysubtitles, by Dexter21767.

stremio://2ecbbd610840-yifysubtitles.baby-beamup.club/manifest.json

There are many sentences I see that look like they mean the same thing, but the only difference is that new ye is put into the middle

For example, what's the difference between saying ምግብ ቤት ውስጥ እሰራለሁ and ምግብ ቤት ውስጥ ነው የምስራው?

In a lot of my textbooks (admittedly all older textbooks, since there's basically no Amharic resources from the last 10-15 years) I see "how?" given as እንደምን but when I see actual modern Amharic, I feel like I see እንዴት more.

Is endemen just outdated and supplanted by endiet or is there more going on here?

I've had it translated as "that" or "by saying", like "They decided that they would run", or "They decided by saying they would run". What does it mean, and specifically, is it derived somehow, or is በ- a prefix, like in a word like በጥንካሬ ('in-strength')?

Is there an Amharic word for “Melancholy”?

what does this mean ይከራም. Is it a name? If so does what does it mean?

Hey, does anyone know how to spell the name ‘Ekram’ in Amharic. I would like to buy a necklace for a friend and don’t want to mess up the translation.

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https://preview.redd.it/29u2367auhec1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=259fdac33a9327f9c23a26898bee31b1d7dfe199

Hi, is anyone here able to decipher this note? At first I thought it was Greek, because I recognized some Greek letters (like xi, lambda, phi, delta, gamma), but a lot of the other letters are hard if not impossible to recognize, at least for me (only had one year of classical Greek in high school).

Then at r/greek, some mentioned it looks a lot like Amharic, and looking at the Amharic alphabet, I guess it just might be.

I guess the handwriting is as terrible as mine is in Dutch. Also, there are some words/letters from English and maybe even other languages?

Context (translated from Dutch, posted by someone on some Dutch website):
"After an evening of Friends of Amstel LIVE [popular Dutch music festival], you wake up in hotel room. Turns out you got a spectacular and passionate love letter on toilet paper."

https://preview.redd.it/3u7t67t4m2ec1.png?width=376&format=png&auto=webp&s=1abffe31b5c0047f4547b267b19bac10ac9b6550

I'm interested in learning Amharic (Ge'ez script?) phonetically, and I want to take handwritten notes. I'm fully new to semitic languages and I'm wondering if there are any rules about how the letters are written (start on a certain side, certain shapes are drawn with certain lines in a certain order in a certain direction, etc) or if it's just like English (letter writing guidelines are given to kids to assist when they're first learning, but as you grow up nobody really cares as long as it's legible). I wouldn't want to be disrespectful and start off learning to write incorrectly. I'm already a bit intimidated by the differences in punctuation but I'm excited to learn more about it.

Honestly, this is all so new to me, I don't even know where to start. Any advice is appreciated. It would also be cool to learn to speak some basic Amharic later on down the line.

https://andemta.com/2017/05/03/%E1%88%98%E1%88%9D%E1%88%85%E1%88%AD-%E1%8A%AD%E1%8D%8D%E1%88%88-%E1%8C%8A%E1%8B%AE%E1%88%AD%E1%8C%8A%E1%88%B5-%E1%8D%B2%E1%8D%B0%E1%8D%BB%E1%8D%B2%E1%8D%AF-%E1%8D%B2%E1%8D%B1%E1%8D%BB/