For the English speaker wishing to learn Amharic - a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia - there is a dearth of good choices when it comes to instructional material. This book and tape set, which I used during a private reading in college, is probably the best option.

The book is divided into fourteen lessons, each of which contains a number of passages in Amharic, the transcription of those passages, a list of vocabulary, a discussion of grammar, and a selection of exercises. An Amharic-English glossary is included at the back.

Pronunciation is a significant challenge with any foreign language, but I found this to be particularly the case with my Amharic studies, and although I had (and have) the benefit of being taught by native speakers, I cannot imagine purchasing this text without the accompanying tapes.

My only real complaint lies in the brevity of the introduction, which introduces the student to the Amharic abugida (a term which derives from the first four letters of the Ge'ez script) - a segmental writing system used both for Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) and modern Amharic, and consisting of 276 fidäl (characters/letters). This writing system presents something of a daunting prospect to the student accustomed to a 26-letter alphabet, and should perhaps have been explored more fully. ( )