Symbols Used in This Course
On the English side, parentheses and quotation marks are used together ('....') when a more literal translation is given in addition to the ordinary English equivalent.
Brackets [] are used to indicate words in the English equivalent which do not have an equivalent in the Amharic.
Parentheses () indicate words which are in the Amharic but not in a normal English equivalent. The English side is not necessarily a literal translation but what is ordinarily said in this situation. The use of parentheses and brackets as explained above should make the situation clear in each case.
On the Amharic side, parentheses are used to indicate sounds which are sometimes omitted. Brackets are used to indicate a more formal pronunciation to be used in more deliberate speech or while reading texts written in Amharic characters. Alternate pronunciations of the same word or alternate words are given after a slant line: /.
The accent mark used is /´/. This indicates the loudest syllable in a word or phrase. Secondary stresses are not marked.
As Amharic has an almost even distribution of stress on each syllable, it is sometimes extremely difficult to detect where the principal stress of a particular word lies. In this Course phrase stress will be marked in the Basic Sentences, but words in the buildups will be left unmarked unless the stress is clearly distinctive.
An arrow /↑/ is used to indicate sharply riscng pitch.
A period /./ is used to indicate the end of a phrase accompanied by falling pitch. It may or may not correspond to an English period.
A comma /,/ indicates that the preceding tone is carried on evenly to the comma and that a new pitch contour begins following the comma. The syllables immediately before /,/ are slightly lengthened. There may not be a break or pause after /,/.
In the Notes slant lines are used to set off Amharic sounds or words within an English text. English letters and words are underlined when used as examples.
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