The word order inside a sentence in Amharic is different than in English. Generally the verb goes at the end of the sentence and the structure is: Subject / Object / Verb.
For example:
Sentence | “I am a student” | ||||||
Amharic |
“ene temari negn” |
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Literally |
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If we now add an adjective to the sentence, it will go before the object:
Sentence | “He is a good student” | ||||||||
Amharic |
“(essu) t’eru temari new” |
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Literally |
*the pronoun is often omitted in Amharic |
Questions:
In the case of a question, when it anticipates a “yes” or “no” answer, the sentence is formed in the same way (Subject / Object / Verb) an only the intonation changes:
Question | Is he an student ? | ||||
Amharic |
“temari new?” |
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Literally | student (he) is? |
Another way to build this type of question is adding the word wäy after the verb and also using the intonation of a question:
Question | Is he good? | ||||||
Amharic |
“t’eru new wey ?” |
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Literally | good (he) is ? |
There is another kind of questions that ask for specific information and that use a word like “who”, “what” or “where”. These type of words usually go before the verb and the the verb is “to be” they are written as an only word:
Question | Who is that student? | ||||||||||||||
Amharic |
or:
|
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Literally | That student who (he) is ? |
Note: to see the Amharic characters, you will need to install an Ethiopic font and then configure your browser
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