Amharic-English Dictionary for Windows

User Reviews

• Revolutionised learning Amharic for me

  ethio_studentAugust 9, 2010

  Pros

  Soooo much better than a physical book dictionary

  Cons

  I guess, the downside is that you need to carry your laptop around wherever you want to use this dictionary. But then again, there are iphones, blackberries, etc. so this is not a downside for the technologically modern person

  Summary

  This is one wonderful software! Before this, because I was so impatient dealing with physical dictionaries (it would take forever to just find the word I want to look up in the first place) I would waste valuable class time with my tutor asking him/her all the words I don't know and want to know. This software is incredibly convenient and spares my teacher from being used as a dictionary! I guess online dictionaries are nowadays not much of a revolution, but strangely enough, there seems to be so little--none?-- competition to selamsoft in the Amharic field, so this software is still king of the hills! I have to say that I'm surprised that there is occasionally the rather basic word that's missing from this e-dictionary, such as "environment". But for the most part I get my basic vocab needs fulfilled! I STRONGLY recommend getting this thing!

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• Excellent and useful software for adoptive families

  allenp77December 15, 2009

  Pros

  This product is easy to use and thorough. It includes a large dictionary of words, and the audio portion is well worth the extra cost. The tech support person was EXTREMELY helpful when I needed to do a reinstall after reformatting my hard drive.

  Cons

  None that I can think of ...

  Summary

  The Amharic/English Dictionary fills a much needed niche in the language translation market. We use it every day as we learn to communicate more clearly with our son from Ethiopia. Excellent product. Thank you, SelamSoft!

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• Useful, time-saving, educational, a great learning tool

  charlissatenDecember 9, 2009

  Pros

  You can instantly find the translation of the word you're looking for. You can hear it pronounced by a native speaker. Along with the definition of a word, you find related material that is of great interest, leading you further in your study.

  Cons

  What's not to like? There is nothing about Amharic-English dictionary that I don't like. I just wish it had been available a long time ago!

  Summary

  I believe that my comments that will prove most useful to those who may be considering purchasing this product will be found in this field rather than in the fields above, because there is room here for me to stretch out and explain why, in my opinon, this dictionary is such a tremendous resource. This opinion is based on my own practically life-long experience of learning Amharic. I am a native speaker of English who started studying Amharic 43 years ago as a 23-year-old American Peace Corps Volunteer assigned to serve in Ethiopia. I have remained a student of the language ever since. Over the years I have acquired a lot of conventional Amharic-English and English-Amharic dictionaries. Most of them are very good, but all have one common disadvantage: it takes some time to look up words in them, particularly Amharic words. You have to know the Amharic alphabet in the correct order (memorizing this is no small task), and once you have located the right fidel, you have to search around amongst its seven orders for the first sound of the word you are looking for, then repeat the process for the remaining letters of the word. (Wolf Leslau made the task of looking up Amharic words easier with the system of alphabetizing (I should say "fidelizing") that he introduced, but it still remains arduous.) If, using a conventional dictionary, you are trying to read a book in Amharic that has some words you don't know, you may soon get discouraged, because you will spend most of your time leafing through your dictionary searching for the unknown words, and have little time left for reading and enjoying the book. If my experience is any example, you may soon give up your reading project as a result. This problem is wonderfully solved by SelamSoft Amharic-English Dictionary. You simply type in the first two or three letters of the word you need, and bingo!--you have the entire Amharic word and its definition, and several related words you are happy to discover--and then you quickly go back to reading your book. I was quite surprised, when I first began using the Dictionary a few years ago, by its comprehensiveness. There were very few words I ever wanted the definitions of that it doesn't contain. One great stumbling block for non-native speakers of Amharic is gemination, or holding onto consonants, a linguistic feature that English does not have. If you are a serious student of Amharic, you want to master this aspect of the language to the degree that you can. If you have the version of Amharic-English Dictionary that includes audio (which I highly recommend), you can study gemination as well as all other aspects of Amharic pronunciation by listening to a native Amharic speaker pronounce each and every word you look up. This is a unique and invaluable resource. These are a few of the aspects of SelamSoft Amharic-English Dictionary that I have found particularly useful. I have heard that the Dictionary is equally valuable to native Amharic-speaking students of English. I recommend this Dictionary to all, in the highest possible terms. Charles Sutton

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