Lukkuu Cimtuu by Biruktaawit Xigaabuu

This is one of the books in the Tsehai Loves Learning series. These books were originally written in Amharic but have been translated into afaan Oromoo. Sadly, the website does not seem to be accepting orders and it was more difficult to find more from the 32 book series last time I was in Addis Ababa. I have a few remaining and once owned a complete set but no more.

For quality, these are some of the best made books I have gotten from Ethiopia and I think each cost around 50 birr but it has been a couple years now since I bought them. They are glossy printed books with lovely artwork. I don’t know Amharic very well, verging on the nonexistent, and I have zero of the English language books remaining to check my understanding, but it seemed pretty straightforward.

There is a group of friends (who are all animals), going to a party. They come to a river (or stream) and some have the ability to get across. Two are left out, the snake and the titular clever chicken from the title. They solve the issue by using the snake like a bridge and everyone has fun at the party.

There are maybe some word choice decisions that I would have gone with a different spelling, and pronunciation, to be more in line with common spelling practices but it was still understandable. For a linguistics post, I may go with a small piece on dialect differences or the use of gender for nouns. The book ends with questions you can try to answer which is cool and a nice way to practice your ability to produce something in afaan Oromoo. Overall, more difficult than the Mega Publishing graded readers we have looked at but those have been the easiest in that series and these Tsehai Loves Learning are not graded but simply a collected set.


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