Afaan Oromoo Books
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Oromo Newspaper Reader, Grammar Sketch, and Lexicon by Tucho et al
Another of my absolute favorite books, and one of the initial books I bought (you can see some of the damage on the cover from shipping this from abroad to Ethiopia as I couldn’t find it in country). This is another book that mainly serves a reference goal now with the lexicon and grammar sketch.…
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And also…
Today a relatively short post to start the day and maybe a longer one later. From reading Kibbeefi Waaqoo you see a lot of –is constructions in rhe sentences. This like; Waarituunis, isaanis, ilkaanis appear often at the start of sentences. The addition of -is to these words implies an “and also” meaning to the…
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Kibbeefi Waaqoo by Addunyaa Barkeessaa
As I said earlier, Grammatical Sketch is kind of a boring book to just read through so I am trying to get more short books in this week. This is Kibbeefi Waaqoo, another Mega Publishing graded reader by Addunyaa Barkeessaa. Another relatively early reader, but this one sees a lot more use of transitions in…
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The Focus Marker
Now I would like to talk a little about focus markers. This also touches on the subject of different dialects of afaan Oromoo. I would like to look at focus markers that are used with the predicate, specifically nan, hin, in, and ni. Although, some dialects may differ, these markers are used usually directly before…
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A Grammatical Sketch of Written Oromo by Catherine Griefenow-Mewis
This is probably one of my favorite books and, in addition to the Oromo Newspaper Reader and Lexicon, one of the first books about afaan Oromoo that I ever read focusing on the grammar aspect of the language. Grammatical Sketch is clearly a reference work and it would be unlikely for someone to read through…
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Marqaa by Addunyaa Barkeessaa
This is part of Mega Publishing and Spotlight Publishing’s graded readers for school children. I have many of these and similar books but it is difficult to find a complete set. This is one of the easier books from the series that I have so I decided to start with this one. Each page is…
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Going to try two (or more) books
This week, I would like to try something that I hope will become more normal. I am going to try to read and post about at least two books. One will be a more grammar heavy reference book and the other(s) will be easy children’s books. The grammar book is A Grammatical Sketch of Written…
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Case System
As I mentioned before, afaan Oromoo has a case system. This might be something that is less known for those who have not learned another language in the past. In essence, this means that the form of the noun changes depending on the information that the word is portraying. In English, these meanings are often…
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Marked Nominative
Afaan Oromoo is what is a called a marked nominative language. Marked nominative is when a word is the “doer” of the sentence’s verb that word is marked compared to its normal form. What this means is that if you ask someone what the word for coffee is, they will say buna but if you…
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-uu and -chuu Verbs
In afaan Oromoo, the infinitive form of the verb usually ends in -uu. This would be the word you look up in a dictionary when looking for a meaning for the verb. For example, If I said: I go to work.- Ani hojiin deema. I would look up the word deemuu in a dictionary to…