Besprecbungen 279

h...VOh'lammimk-annJoyou butt me, you caused me paine.The given verbal form hl1llrn., does not aiSt in Amharic, instead h'loorl1" asammiimJe-iiiiri

should be inserted.Sometimes phrases or words are used which are currently not considered proper Amhuic, i. e.

they are old ternu which have only a specializ.ed meaning or have evolved due to langu2.gecontact. Nowadays instead of the phrase t~l. n':t (p. 128) for .school. trUe,. IL" iscommonly used. The phnse ltfIiltl.t (p. 131) seems aho to be. a little bit strange as moSt of thetime titherl." "l.t or tll.'t'hLt is used to express .in frOnt ofe. The feminine counterpart ofn"'1"- is not *7itrlJ1/\.t (p. 37) but het" in Amharic. The word n~1f\.t has a pejorativeconnotation and is used only as an insult. The same seems to be true for 01.t (p. 37); thecommonly used form is 01t'T or O,T.

In addition it would have been very helpful for the beginner if Lesl:m bad indicated theproductivity of cerum derivations. Words like) aJ.'t' I 1't.l.t I 1.1It' (p. 37) are very nre.Inmost of the cases they are only used in a kind of very familiar speech. The more neutral forms inthe discourse are not marked for gender. Only on the copula or verb is gender agreementindicated. as also shown by Leslau in S47.2. (p. 54) or S48.4. (p. 56).

The negative cop~ hl-...h'1" lIydolam (p. 55 S48) is archaic and not used frequendy. The sameis true for the usage of hI-I." lIyiU14 for relative and subordinate forms (p. 56 S 48.l) of thene~tive present tense copula. Today these forms appear mainly in the former Gondar region.However. more common in standard Amharic14 is fAll) yalhonii.

The Gondarine influence of Leslau's language informant is apparent in § 151. p. 170 where beuses )-C nuro as well as ':'C noro as gerund (i.e. converb) of the verb 'i"'L norii. While the Standardfonn is'i"'C nom. the converb)-C nuro is used in the Gondar area. Another trace of Gondarinfluence can be seen in the usage 01 the conjunction U').t' ziind)om order to, so that.. (p. 145).In standard Amharic this conjunction is used very rarely. mOSt often only in froun phnsC$ usedin officialleners. In every day communication the preflI h')R; ~nd- is used to expre.u.in order

to, so thate.In general it seems that the present Introductory GrammllT lacks a good methodological and

didactic approach15 to guide the beginner through the grammar of Amharic. Until now, in myopinion, the beginner should still refer to the more comprehensive works of Appleyard (199.5)16and Richter (1987f. Even though these books are textbooks, they introduce the beginner to theba.si~ of Amharic gnmmar in a well-organised and easy way. Lesla.u's Introductory GrllmTnllr,however, is a good source book for Semirists who are dealmg with Amharic, yet not as good ashisR~ftrtnC~ Grllmmllr.

RonnyMeyer

1-4 Standard Amharic refers to the variety spok~ in Addis Ababa. which is also taught at schoolsand written in the newspapers.

15 When Leslau startS with the explanation of the vowel phonemes (p. 3), he introduces the term'"seven orders. but does not explain it until p2.ge 4. In S43.5-S 43.7 (p. 46f) he wo Wits themethod of sbowing some nominal patterns by usi.ng tbe three ..dummy. radicals Q-T-L.Actually, a word using these C2dic:als does not exist in Amlwic, so be should have markedthem as hypothetical.

16 Appleyard, David. 1995. Colloq"i4/ Amh.n·c A Compku 1AngUIIg~ COMTSt!. London andNew York: Roudedge.

17 Richter, Renate. 1987.Lehrbuch der Amharischm Spr.che. Leipzig: Enzyklopadie Verlag.