Amharisch lernen mit Montessoris Wortartensymbolen

Abstract

The study of Amharic presents German-speaking students with a rather difficult task. In addition to a new writing system and some unfamiliar sounds, they have to learn many grammatical structures that differ significantly from those found in the German language. This is especially true of the Amharic verbal system, which is characterized by a great variety of forms, some of which—the relative verbal form, the gerundive, or the qualifying copula constructions—do not exist in German. In addition, Amharic differs greatly from German in the arrangement of the elements within a sentence. These syntactic differences are a great challenge when learning Amharic. Thus, this article describes a method of learning some elements of Amharic syntax, making them more accessible to students. In order to make the grammatical structures visible, the word symbols developed by the Italian doctor and teacher Maria Montessori are used as aids. The individual types of words in a sentence are represented by symbols, for instance verbs by a red circle, nouns by a black triangle, or adjectives by a blue triangle, thus illustrating the word order and facilitating language learning.