Bottom-Up in Amharic

Got one more tree for you.

This tree works just fine (for what it attempts). Interesting that another Semitic language, whose OT confessional texts are most often translations of Old Greek manuscripts can be described without problem through a method that is problematic for Hebrew and Greek.

Some notes on Gen 1.1 in Amharic-
1. It moves left-to-right, like English or Greek.
2. Like the phonology of the Hebrew preposition, the Amharic text begins with a preposition /b/.
3. Unlike the Hebrew and Greek texts of Gen 1.1, the direct objects (which precede the verb in Amharic) are not definite.
4. In Amharic, it is typical (you have to have a very good reason not to) for the verb to come last.
5. This utterance was taken from the modern Bible used in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. It is in Amharic. The ancient Ethiopian texts, which are valuable to text critics of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, are in Ge’ez.
6. A NASB, ‘word-for-word’ gloss of this might be: in beginning, God heavens and land (he) created.

For some reason, people often call Ge’ez and/or Amharic “Ethiopic”. I’m no Ethiopia expert. But for confessional reasons, I’ve been studying Amharic (with the desire to eventually read Ge’ez) for a little over a year with my brother Jeremy Masters, Taft Street kitchen/coffehouse manager and front man for the Houston-based reggae band Dubtex. And it bothers us when people say something about “Ethiopic”. Why? Well first, its never clear if they’re talking about Amharic or Ge’ez, the modern and ancient languages of the Amhara people as well as the state language for the country. And secondly, the Amharas are not the only people in Ethiopia. To call only Amhara languages “Ethiopic” (be it Ge’ez or Amharic) is very exclusive and dismissive of other Ethiopian languages like Oromo, Tigre, or Tigrenyen. Often in Ethiopia’s history, these other groups were forced to speak Amharic.