All our course material comes directly from NTIS, notice their price is $385, our price is $19.95!

Here is a picture of our Amharic Basic Course Cassettes that we mastered using the Tascam Pro Audio equipment below. Double click the images to see a detailed image.

Learn Amharic Language

Language Experts agree, our courses are the most complete and thorough self-instructional language course available. Repetition, vocabulary, sentence structure are the building blocks our course utilizes to teach a language. Lots of repetition drills. Dialog drills. Pronunciation drills. Vocabulary. The audio material is from native speakers and the corresponding textbook is your guide. Our Methodology, Guided Imitation, sets the student on a path to a certified level of fluency. We no longer sell our courses in Volume I and Volume II, so there's no up sell for the next level. You will receive the entire course material, on DVD, for the lowest price we can afford to produce, $19.95. Our shipping cost is $5.45 for domestic shipping and $16.45 for international shipping, which is the exact price we pay the U.S. Postal Service to ship priority mail. We do not make money off of shipping, and ship priority mail because it is the fastest and least expensive way to ship. The DVD will play in both a PC or MAC, and the audio can easily be saved to an IPOD or other MP3 device. You will need Adobe Reader to access the PDF textbook.

Our Value Proposition

The Learn Amharic Language Basic Course, as you can see, sells for $385 from NTIS, the United States printing service for audio/visual materials; however, they only sell it on audio cassette as you can see from our screen capture of their shopping cart. We purchased the material from NTIS, as evidenced by the screenshot provided of the original Amharic Basic Course Audio Cassettes, and did the remastering work. We had the textbook professionally digitized into a PDF file. And then we spent countless hours remastering the cassette to a digital form, now we are providing this course to you for roughly 5% of the cost of original material. Only $19.95!

Our Quality Proposition: It's all about the Remastering!

We used Tascam Pro Audio equipment to do the initial digital remastering from cassette to compact disc. Once completed, we converted the compact discs into an uncompressed WAV file. We copied what would have been on Side B of the Cassettes, to the end of Side A, creating one continous file, saving again as a WAV file. We used audio software, like Nero and Audacity, to clean up the audio even more. This multi step process includes converting the mono file to stereo, normalizing the volume across the entire WAV file, removing "clicks and pops", doing a low frequency filter, then a high frequency filter, truncating silences to 3 seconds to ensure the audio is quick to begin and end without dead space, normalized the volume again, and outputting the file as another WAV file. We used an MP3 encoder to convert the WAV file to an MP3 file, and we tagged all files with Subject, Title, Copyright, Volume I, Volume II data.

What does all this mean?

The remastering process and filter work means that silence sounds like silence. And in this case, silence truly is golden. Our product is of unparalleled quality, and we can honestly make the claim that no one has spent more time making these courses sound as good as our courses sound. We have provided significant improvements to the sound quality versus the original masters, and even the material we were selling just a year ago, thanks to current technology. All you have to do is open our files in a sound editor and see that silence is a straight line, not wavy, and this means clarity.

About the Amharic Basic Course

FSI Amharic Basic Course contains 19 hours of audio, and two textbooks in PDF file format with 1078 pages.

Amharic belongs to the Southern Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) family of languages. The number of native speakers of Amharic together with the speakers of the other Semitic languages spoken in Ethiopia (such as Tigriniya, Tigre, Harari, Gurage and others) is less than one half the total population of the Empire. The greatest part of Ethiopia is inhabited by speakers of Cushitic languages (another branch of the Afro-Asiatic family) such as Galla, Agaw, Somali and many others. Since no census has ever been taken in Ethiopia the number of Ethiopians can only be estimated. According to the official data of the Ethiopian government the number of inhabitants of Ethiopia is between 20 and 22 million. It is also difficult to give a reliable estimate of the number of Amharic speakers; it is probably between 5 and 7 million. There is little doubt, however, that due to the constantly growing development of communications systems and the spreading of education Amharic is gaining ground throughout the whole country. It is now the language of greatest prestige and anyone who has had any education is able to speak it, even if it is not his mother tongue. Still others learn it informally as a second language.

The purpose of this Amharic course is to teach the Amharic language as it is spoken in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.

Amharic drills are recorded first for listening, then for familiarization through repetition, and finally for participation. During the participation step, when the student performs the required manipulation, his utterances are confirmed on the audio immediately following the space provided for his participation.

Amharic Drills are generally in two groups in any unit: a) variation drills on pattern sentences, which provide opportunities for the student to develop flexibility in the use of patterns already memorized, and b) grammar drills, which are intended to provide practice for the student in the operation of the patterns explained in the immediately preceding grammar notes.

Learn Amharic 1 - Hello, Goodbye, general greetings

Learn Amharic 2 - Excuse me, where is the American Embassy

Learn Amharic 3 - Hello, my name is..., what's yours?

Learn Amharic 4 - Directions to a good hotel

Learn Amharic 5 - Speaking with the hotel receptionist

Learn Amharic 6 - What are you doing tomorrow

Learn Amharic 7 - Shopping

Learn Amharic 8 - Morning routine

Learn Amharic 9 - What do you do after school

Learn Amharic 10 - How have you been?

Learn Amharic 11 - Good afternoon, how are you feeling?

Learn Amharic 12 - Ethiopian calender is different that European

Learn Amharic 13 - Purchasing, dealing with money at the market

Learn Amharic 14 - Purchasing gasoling

Learn Amharic 15 - Ordering food

Learn Amharic 16 - Ordering food

Learn Amharic 17 - At the tailor's shop

Learn Amharic 18 - Where are you going this morning?

Learn Amharic 19 - Talking about the weather

Learn Amharic 20 - Let's go to the mountains next week if the weather is good

Learn Amharic 21 - An Ethiopian wishes to come to America

Learn Amharic 22 - Paying expenses and studying in Ethiopia

Learn Amharic 23 - Finding a bank

Learn Amharic 24 - Cashing a check

Learn Amharic 25 - Good afternoon, come on in, please.

Learn Amharic 26 - How have you been?

Learn Amharic 27 - Dialog: Entering a living room and making introductions

Learn Amharic 28 - Questions about the United States

Learn Amharic 29 - When did you arrive? By plane, train, or bus?

Learn Amharic 30 - Excuse me, what is the name of this place?

Learn Amharic 31 - There's a good hotel near the garage I was telling you about.

Learn Amharic 32 - How pleasant it is inside the house

Learn Amharic 33 - Introductions: How do you do sir, my name is..

Learn Amharic 34 - Purchasing a new bed

Learn Amharic 35 - Where to send the merchandise

Learn Amharic 36 - When did you come to Ethipia from America

Learn Amharic 37 - What's the weather like?

Learn Amharic 38 - What is the main occupation of people in Ethiopia

Learn Amharic 39 - What kind of fruit farmers raise in Ethiopia

Learn Amharic 40 - Brief description of domestic and wild animals in Ethiopia

Learn Amharic 41 - Talking with the telephone operator for the Interior ministry

Learn Amharic 42 - It's nice to see you

Learn Amharic 43 - Importing equipment

Learn Amharic 44 - How did you spend your day

Learn Amharic 45 - What kind of game is 'gugs'?

Learn Amharic 46 - Good afternoon, do you have a house for rent?

Learn Amharic 47 - Religion of Ethiopian people

Learn Amharic 48 - I hear Ethiopia is a good place for hunting?

Learn Amharic 49 - A visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Learn Amharic 50 - A visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Learn Amharic 51 - Education

Learn Amharic 52 - What kind of courses are offered?

Learn Amharic 53 - Ethiopian Government

Learn Amharic 54 - Ethiopian Consitution and Government

Learn Amharic 55 - How laws are made

Learn Amharic 56 - Sphere of authority of ministers

Learn Amharic 57 - United States government

Learn Amharic 58 - Ethiopian court system

Learn Amharic 59 - Marriage Ceremony

Learn Amharic 60 - American at the office

About the Amharic Language

Amharic is indigenous to Ethiopia and is the most widely used and understood language in the country. Just a few basic phrases will guide you through stunning landscapes to mystical churches, ancient sites and the bustling backstreets of Ethiopian towns.

Amharic is the official language of the media and government, and widely used in cross-cultural communications. It's the mother tongue of the Amhara people, who originate from the central and north-western highlands.

Amharic is a Semitic language, belonging to the Afro-Asiatic family. In Amharic, a rising tone at the end of a sentence signifies a question. There's not always a clear relationship between the spelling of Amharic script and its pronunciation. The word order of Amharic sentences is generally subject-object-verb. There's no need to mark a noun plural in Amharic if the number is clear from the context. Many Amharic words and phrases, including greetings, change form, depending on whether a male, female, elder person or authority figure or group is being addressed. Amharic uses negative verb forms in place of "no". In Amharic, feelings are often expressed as verbs with the subject attached.