Reyot’s Interview of Dr Bezza on a topical subject- modernizing the Amharic Language on EBS TV was very interesting and quintessentially relevant to the time. I was taken aback by the quality of questions raised by Reyot and even more interestingly the answers and analysis provided by Dr Bezza on this engaging subject matter. The discussion invites the listener to pose many questions, opinions, comments and investigations like: Why did the efforts of Ethiopian linguists, academics, and institutes fail to bear fruit in creating new Amharic scientific words to convey new concepts, technologies, phenomena etc. of the modern world? Was there a concerted and coordinated effort to evaluate why these projects fail to achieve their goals? Were different scholars and linguists of Ethiopian origin invited to talk on the issue? If every linguist like Dr Bezza, Dr Mesfin, Professors Getachew Haile and Fikrie Tolossa tries to develop new scientific words on his own right, we will likely have many different new scientific words representing same things, concepts, phenomena etc. The question now is which one should we adopt? Fore example, Dr Bezza likes to use “Annur” in Amharic to represent the Windows Command “Save” while Dr Mesfin may wish to use “Askeemett” to represent the same command. Which one should we take? Who is to bring this consensus? What is the role of the news media or discussion forums in popularising the newly created Amharic scientific words among the users? Can we borrow words from other Ethiopian languages such as Oromigna, Tigrigna, Geez, Guraghegna, Sidamigna etc to make the new words sound more like Ethiopian? This effort of modernizing the Amharic language project will further be made very difficult in the face of greater reluctance by many Amharic speakers, both scholars and the laity to use only Amharic words to convey messages in Amharic conversations. Thanks to the VOA Amharic Service, they are trying their best to make the speakers use only Amharic words to convey their messages in interviews and discussions only to find them using more English words afterwards. I believe most of us are tempted to use English words in Amharic conversations to appear more enlightened and modern when we don’t need to? This is a sickness that can’t go away easily. Well, great job Dr Bezza and Reyot in getting conversations going around this subject now and even creating a web page, so every one interested in the project can contribute his part on the subject. Let’s start with dozens of Amharic Scientific words and promote them to be used by Amharic speakers and take the effort forward gradually! “Kes be kes enqulal be egru yehedal adel yemibalew!! Bekalu
