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 dedicated to about one, or sometimes two, sentences and an accompanying drawing. The entire story is eight pages so it is a very quick read.
I have read the book before and it was definitely “decodable” as the cover says. Although I forgot that laatte is a word for giving, although not one I see a lot, and seeing that marqite is used for saying that one character is making marqaa the story was very understandable. Marqaa, called genfo in Amharic, is a traditional porridge like food that is often served with berbere and butter. I would often eat this in the evening when visiting one of my friends at his house as his mother knew that I enjoyed it.
This short story sees a man visiting someone’s house and being invited for coffee, which he declines for some reason, and is then invited for marqaa, which he also declines. The woman he is visiting doesn’t take no for an answer twice and quickly cooks up marqaa for them to enjoy during his visit. It is a short story that demonstrates a cultural event to a small degree.
I would describe the written afaan Oromoo as exemplary of standard written Oromoo. For a language that is relatively new to being written, and which still is written many different ways depending on who is writing and where they are from, this is no small matter. All the vowel sounds are elongated where I would imagine they would be if I was speaking. There are a handful of different choices that I may have used based on my preferences but it was all very understandable and clear. There are a couple of linguistics posts I may go into from example sentences from this book.
An interesting note, which I might change if I find information to confirm or deny this, is the author. Addunyaa Barkeessaa is a name that might be seen several times here. I do not have enough information to say for sure but the Addunyaa Barkeessaa I know of is an author and linguist who has written several afaan Oromoo linguistics books in afaan Oromoo. They are excellent books that explain grammatical points within the language itself and I have many if not all of his currently published books.