Over-differentiation in Amharic Orthography and Attitude towards Reform

Abstract

There were a number of academic debates over the superfluous sounds in the orthographyof Amharic. Some of the scholars in the area were pro while the others against thepossible reforms in the orthography. The over-differentiated sounds were said to havebeen adopted from Ge’ez, and had sociological significances. As they are used currently,their sociological values are neutralized, and are used more randomly. The superfluoussounds have been adopted by other Ethiosemitic languages, such as Guragina andTigrinya. Thus, the purpose of this article is to find out whether the over-differentiated sounds in the orthography of Amharic are problems or not in language teaching, software development and dictionary preparation. The research methodology followed was mixedmethods; survey and text analysis. Data were obtained through the existing literature and questionnaire. The participants in the survey were teachers who taught at different levels: kindergarten to university. About twenty of them were applied linguistics PhD studentsat Addis Ababa University. The finding showed that the superfluous sounds areproblems in teaching initial reading, preparation of dictionary and in software applicationdeveloping. The attitudes towards the script reform were largely inconclusive though themajority of the participants were pro reforms. The study suggested reform options, bywhom the reform should be made, and how other languages may adapt the Amharicscript. Furthermore, the need for EPA (Ethiopian Phonetic Alphabet) is proposed.