I have not died, but I have been unordinarily sick these last three months. I have returned from my trip to Ethiopia with a handful of new books but I have also started going through a dictionary. Reading a dictionary may not seem like the most fun but it is enjoyable so far. I have no clear plan to finish reading the dictionary but will try to keep up with it as time allows.
What I do
I am just reading the dictionary for fun but when time allows I am also writing the different words that I like. My idea is that I am trying to find words that better allow me to express myself and understand what I read or hear. This is a very subjective system as I may skip a word that I don’t know, but may add a word I do know. I do this particularly when I come across a way of using the word that I don’t know or am not as comfortable using, or when the example sentence is particularly good.
For example, I know the word aadee when used as a title of address, but was less sure of it as a term used by a younger brother for an older sister. Or, the word gubaa used not simply to say something is hot but when used to imply something burned up. I would like to better understand some of the situations that I encounter and use my own sense of humor in making stories and comments.
This goes back to when I initially learned the language and told stories that were absurd and got pushback from teachers and other speakers. I got the sense that this was not a common story form when I tried very hard to explain that I wanted to say grammatically correctly that a stone walked across the road. For possibly a few reasons my goal was not well received as having a rock as the subject of the sentence was continually corrected.
What Dictionary
At this time, I own several dictionaries. English, German, French, Italian, monolingual afaan Oromoo and more fill my shelves. I am going back to basics though and using the very clear and well written (as well as very well printed if that is of importance) Tilahun Gamta dictionary. This is not the one that I reviewed once but the new printing (found the Amazon page for the printing as I could not find a Google Book page for this edition but I am obviously not connected in any way with it). It uses modern clear qubee and has many example sentences.
In a future post, maybe I will show a little bit of the information that I try to get out of each reading. Take a page from the dictionary and show what a page in my notes looks like by comparison.