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Why Hahu Books?
- We believe that part of the problem for the lack
of high quality children’s books in Amharic is due to the absence
of publishers specialising in children’s reading materials. There
is a great need for publishers * who provide editorial works for
would-be writers, *who raise/maintain literary/artistic standards,
* who strive to improve the quality of printing and binding, and
last but not least, * who facilitate the distribution of published
materials. HaHu Books would like to be one such publisher.
About Our Name
- HaHu is the popular name of the Amharic alphabet. The name
is composed of the first two syllables of the main table of the
Amharic alphabet.
- Also HaHu, rather like the use of ‘ABC’ in English, means a mere
beginning, the starting point of a subject matter, or the process
of learning. Thus, we thought HaHu, as a name for our
small publishing set-up, captures our commitment to basic education,
whilst symbolising our humble beginnings.
On-going projects
- To date our principal project has been Bukaya,
a family magazine with various educational games for Amharic speaking
children and their parents. It is available by subscription from
HaHu Books, and from some Ethiopian shops in London.
- Over the past two years, we have also been providing Book
Reviews on recently published books for
or about Ethiopian children. Some of these book are bilingual, written
in Amharic and English, while others are monolingual in one of these
languages. The reviews cover books published both in Ethiopia and
abroad. The Amharic reviews are available in printed copies of Bukaya
and hosted on this website along with English reviews. Our hope
is that this becomes a useful guide to books on and/or for Ethiopian
children, a valuable resource page to parents, guardians and educators.
- Shortly, we hope to also distribute other educational materials;
CDs, videos, dictionaries and the like.
(For your free sample copy of Bukaya please e-mail us your address
and we will post it to you.)
What is Amharic?
- Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia, a nation of many
ethnic groups speaking different languages and dialects. Amharic
is spoken by some twelve million Amhara people, the second largest
ethnic group in the country, and by another twelve or more
millions people of different ethnic groups who speak it as
a first or second language. It is the most widely spoken language
in Ethiopia as its prevalence is not confined to a particular geographical
region of the country. It is also the only language of the country
that can boast of having millions of non-natives speakers, millions
of the country’s citizens belonging to ethnic groups other than
the Amhara.
- Amharic belongs to a branch of Semitic language, forming
a distinct group with other Ethiopian Semitic languages such as
Tigrigna, Tigrä, and the various dialects of Guragé.
- Amharic is a written language, though Amharic literature
is a recent development. Writing in Amharic began in the middle
of the nineteenth century, and its development effectively ended
the pre-eminence of Geez, which until then was the literary language
of the court and the Orthodox church. With the spread of literacy
and the development of modern education and printing in the twentieth
century, Amharic literature developed in diversity and sophistication
to be considered as one of Africa’s major home-grown literature.
- Literary Amharic uses the alphabet of the Geez script, a writing
system that dates back to the ancient Axumite civilisation, a contemporary
to that of the classical Roman civilisation. The Amharic alphabet
(which is an augmented version of the basic Geez alphabet) consists
of thirty-three ‘basic characters’, each of which has six additional
modified characters to represent the complete vowel orders. Thus,
the main table of the traditional Amharic syllabary, appears as
characters set in thirty-three rows and seven columns.
- A minor table of 4 x 5 syllables known as labiovelar and
some twenty additional labialised syllables of one vowel order complete
the Amharic character sets.
- As with the alphabets, Amharic also uses the Geez numerals,
albeit for limited purposes such as page numbers and dates. These
consists of single figures for one to ten, as well as for all multiples
up to and including one hundred (10, 20, … 100). It also has a single
figure for ten thousand (10,000).
- The following links have additional information on Amharic language,
script and literature:
http://www.abyssiniacybergateway.net/eritrea/info/bender.html
http://www.AfricanLanguage.com/
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