Afaan Oromoo Books
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Open Hearts Big Dreams
This is a long running series of Ethiopian related books published in English and local Ethiopian languages. The books are published in both English and the local language through Open Hearts Big Dreams. This results in titles like Something is Coming: Wanti tokko dhufaa jira. I am not a fan of bilingual books for studying.…
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Back Again
Hello again. I am back again as it has once more been longer than I would like since I last posted. Again, work and moving have affected the free time I have (in addition to starting a summer course far away from where I work, but close to where I grew up), but hopefully there…
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Namicha Baayyee Dheeraa
This is part of the afaan Oromoo books that are available from African Storybooks. Specifically, I got the PDF for Namicha baayyee dheeraa from the Storybooks Canada website. This is the first one that I saw while looking through those that I have. It is not the easiest one that they have produced, as it…
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Qocaa fi Mudannooshee
Qocaa fi Mudannooshee is another book from the Tshehai Loves Learning series. I have looked more recently and the website still does not support purchasing which is unfortunate as they are nice afaan Oromoo books. This is a story about how Turtle got it’s shell. In this world all the forest animals would gather for…
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Lehrbuch des Oromo by Catherine Griefenow-Mewis and Tameme Bitima
It has been a very busy month between work and an online workshop (where I focused on afaan Oromoo as my topic). Hopefully it will not be so long in the future. Today, I am going to start looking at Catherine Griefenow-Mewis and Tameme Bitima’s Lehrbuch des Oromo. My German is not great but this…
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Reported Speech
In general, I dislike reported speech. It isn’t horrible but even for native speakers it isn’t impossible to lose track of exactly who it was that performed the actions. For speakers of afaan Oromoo as a second language, people are not always forgiving of mistakes in considering how well someone speaks. The example from stood…
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Boontuu fi Hoolaa Ishee by Maaykil Daani’eel Ambaachew
This is a cute little book about a girl and her friendship with a sheep. Of course the sheep is not originally supposed to be a pet, but through mischief the girl is able to save the sheep. I enjoyed the read but there were no new words or different situations for me to encounter…
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Dialect Differences
Afaan Oromoo is spoken across a wide area of east Africa. There are maybe common features that have been identified but an official dialect has not been created or confirmed for things written in the language. These differences can be like preference for certain words or sentence structures but the other option is allowed or…
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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…
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Newspaper Reader Selection One: Jaha Dhalte
The first selection in the Oromo Newspaper Reader is about a sheep giving birth to six lambs. This is a great book as I said, as every single word is explained in depth. For me now it is relatively easy but a beginner might be wondering why they see lamaa being used in a sentence…