Learning AmhEnglish

The kids and I printed off our first 6 page document of common Amharic phrases. Hopefully we'll learn to say some of the basics...or at least the one below that means "Sorry, I don't understand".

What's AmhEnglish? It's 1/2 Amheric and 1/2 English - Duh :o)

It's our family's cleaver (go-bez) way of trying to say words in another language using the only language we know. We came up with "Chinglish" when MJ came home, and to this day when we can't figure out what she's saying (or doing), we say "Is that Chinglish?" Hopefully our AmhEnglish will be better than our Chinglish for our son's sake!

Want to learn some words with us? Don't worry, there won't be a test (not for you anyhow). Pretty sure our "test" will be a long one, starting this Spring and ending sometime in the next 5 -10 years. Yikes! This is going to be fun...

English – Amharic – Phonetic
Hello – Selam – Se-la-m
Bye/So long – Ciao – Chi-o
Thank you – Ameseginalehu – Ame-segi-na-lew
Coffee – Buna – Boo-na
Food – Megib – M-gi-b
Yes – Awo – Ah-wo
No – Aye – Eye
All gone – yellum – yell-um
Excuse me – Yikerta – Yi-ke-r-ta
I’m sorry, I don’t understand – Aznallo, algo banyem
Come (boy) – nah – naw
Come (girl) – naeye – nay
Done, enough, stop – becka -(or baa–kaw)
Okay? – Isshy – e-she
Sit down (two) kuchu-belu
Sit down (one) kuchu-bay
Good – kahn-joe-no
Pretty – kahn-joe OR cone-joe
Very clever (high compliment) – go-bez

By the way...when I met our son-to-be in May, I was told he was 7 when his uncle brought him to the orphanage and that he'd been there for about a year (if my math is correct, that would mean he would have been about 8ish when I met him, right?). When we got his court date last week, we also got to choose the month and day for his birthday (since they guess-timate those anyhow). The "doctor" over there gets to estimate his age, however. And you know what? "He" is suddenly 11. Yep, he'll turn 12 this Spring - May 10th. Can you believe that? When we signed up for an "older child", we were thinking he'd be closer to Chelsea's age and were really hoping he'd be at least a few months older. Guess our wish came true. We quickly had to do the math, though, because Corey doesn't want to be younger than his new brother! Thankfully, he's still got 5 months on him. Phew...that was a close one! Guess for 7 months of the year we'll sort of have "twins". I always wanted twins (bet you never knew that :o)