I recently spent three weeks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In addition to being a country rich in both food as nature – and cultural experiences is Ethiopia rich in languages. Around 80 different languages, it is estimated that the country’s 100 million inhabitants speak. The official language and it is surrounded by in the capital is amharic, a semitic language spoken by over 20 million people. Amharic is written with a fantastically beautiful syllabic base alphabet called ge’ez – which, unfortunately, is quite difficult to learn. It is my personal experience after eight years, and have lived together with a cushy, and so far only managed to teach me (not very nicely) to write my own name. Therefore I have now decided to ignore the alphabet and focus on only the spoken language.
once in place in Addis Ababa, I had a golden opportunity to practice and actually managed to teach me quite a lot. My vocabulary in amharic is now composed of the most common artighetsfraserna and miscellaneous kärleksbetygelser which I could previously – and a new favorite word, which I heard people use in every other sentence: ችግር የለም.
It is pronounced roughly chekryellem and is equivalent of the English expression as it is quiet, no danger or don’t worry. I puree at the idea of what klämkäck conclusion of the chronicle this would be. Be aware that the ethiopians have a single lovely word for something that we swedes need to describe with three. I thought it said something nice about their way of living and being – everything will be ok, is quiet and goes to solve – and could not we in Sweden learn something from the word, of the setting?
But now it was unfortunately not so, as I sudden found out that ችግር የለም is two words, namely ”problem” and ”no” – and thus mean exactly the same thing as in English: no problem. I don’t know what the klämkäcka the lesson of it would be. I must try and learn to read give’ez still, possibly.
karin@spraktidningen.se
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