² Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Bodleianae Oxoniensis, pars VII. Codices Aethiopici (1858), digessit A. Dillmann, p. 82–3, ms. 33. The first page of the manuscript is reproduced with many mistakes in Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 9, 1770, 1, 2 and 1773, 1.402 ff. (Edinburgh, 1790). The misprints and mistakes of this edition are very numerous. The vocabulary of the ms. of Bruce is also found (in transliteration) in A. Murray, An Account of the Life and Writings of James Bruce 436–9 (Edinburgh, 1808).

³ Another inconvenience of the Ethiopic writing is that a consonant written with the so-called Ethiopic 6th order may be pronounced with the vowel ә or without vowel. For the pronunciation of the vowel ә, see Westermann-Ward, Practical Phonetics for Students of African Languages 39–40 (1933), and Marcel Cohen, Traité de langue amharique 44 (1936).

⁴ Such doublets are: the verb ‘to be’ nåw (Amh.), wәtato (Gafat); the article -u (Amh.), -š (Gaf.); the plural -oč (Amh.), -ač (Gaf.); the suffixed pronoun of the 1st person -ñ (Amh.), -ni (Gaf.); the name of manner aqqätatәla (Amh.), atqätatәl (Gaf.); the imperfect yәqätl (Amh.), yәqätli (Gaf.); the imperfect and gerundive compounded with the verb of existence allä (Amh.), with the verb yәnät, yanәt (Gaf.), and so forth.

⁵ This division of the South-Ethiopic languages is asserted by M. Cohen, Etudes d'Ethiopien méridional 42–3 (1931), and by E. Cerulli, Studi etiopici I. Harar 441 (1936). H. J. Polotsky, Études de grammaire Gouragué, Bull. Soc. Ling. 39.175 (1938) expresses some reservations concerning this classification.

⁶ For an attempt at dialectal classification of the Ethiopic languages with the exception of Gafat, see M. Cohen, Études d'Ethiopien méridional 14–38, and W. Leslau, Contributions à l'étude du harari, Journal Asiatique 1937.452–7.

⁷ The Ethiopic languages are abbreviated as follows: Amh. = Amharic, Arg. = Argobba, G = Geez, Gaf. = Gafat, Gur. = Guragué, Har. = Harari, Te. = Tigré, Tña. = Tigriña. The vowels are ä for the Ethiopic first order, a for the Ethiopic 4th order, ә for the Ethiopic 6th order.

⁸ But only verbal final vowels and not nominal final vowels. Thus Amh. bete ‘my house’ (with preservation of t), but käfәčče ‘I having opened’ (from kft); anaṭi ‘carpenter’ (with preservation of ṭ, this participle being considered as a noun), but wåsaǧ ‘one who takes’ (from wsd, participle derived from the verb).

⁹ Cerulli, Harar 95; Leslau, Contributions har. 437.

¹⁰ The examples are taken from the dialect reported by W. Munzinger, Vocabulaire de la langue Tigré (1863); see also Littmann, Das Verbum der Tigré-Sprache 17 (offprint).

¹¹ As for Tigriña, even the dialects which use the ‘euphonic’ -i, this -i is not found in all cases, as for instance after the conjunction of coordination -n ‘and’. In this case some Tigriña dialects (Aden and Akkele Guzay) use the inserted ә between the last radical and the -n, as säb'ay-ә-n ‘and a man’; see Leslau, Observations sur quelques dialectes du Tigrigna, JA 1939.75.

¹² F. Praetorius, Grammatik der Tigrigna-Sprache 175 (1871).

¹³ W. Leslau, South-East Semitic, JAOS 63.6 (1943).

¹⁴ It is to be noted that the form -ač appears also in Amharic in the suffixed pronouns of the plural, 1st person -ač-әn, 2nd person -ač-әhu, 3rd person -ač-åw, and in the suffix of the 2nd pers. plural perfect -ač-әhu. Thus: bet-ač-әn ‘our house’, bet-ač-әhu ‘your house’, bet-ač-åw ‘their house’, fälläg-ač-әhu ‘you wanted’.

¹⁵ The ending -at of North-Ethiopic occurs in Te. and Tña. (which has also the ending -ot) for both the masculine and the feminine. In G the masculine is differentiated by the ending -an, as opposed to the feminine -at, especially in the participle.

¹⁶ Amharic and Occidental Guragué have the type qättälä with gemination of the 2nd radical.

¹⁷ As well as in Ancient Harari, see Cerulli, Harar 358.

¹⁸ c designates a consonant, v a vowel.

¹⁹ For the problem of the negative particles in Ethiopic, see M. Cohen, Etudes d'Ethiopien méridional 34–5.

²⁰ In Tña. the gerundive has even the value of a principal tense. Thus while the G gerundive qätilo, Amh. qätlo is used in a subordinate sentence ‘he killing, having killed’, the gerundive qätilo of Tigriña means also ‘he has killed’ beside the original meaning of ‘he having killed, killing’.

²¹ Cerulli, Harar 355; Leslau JA 1937.455.

²² Cp. the 10th form of Arabic.

²³ Leslau, South-East Semitic, JAOS 63.11 (1943).

²⁴ Also in Ugaritic, and in some cases in Akkadian.

²⁵ The personal pronoun in Semitic, especially this of the 3rd person, shows so much variation that it can not easily serve as a criterion for linguistic classification because of the numerous secondary formations we find in this part of speech. To give an example from Ethiopic: the personal pronoun of the 3rd person in Amh. is әrsu, әssu, Tña. nәssu, Arg. kissu, Har. azzo. The only characteristic feature common to all these pronouns is the suffixed pronoun -u in the first three languages, and -zo in Harari. As to the 1st element, it is Amh. rә's ‘head’, Tña. nәfs ‘soul’, Arg. kirs ‘interior’. For Har. az-zo, see Cohen, Etudes d'Ethiopien méridional 278; Cerulli, Harar 80 note; Leslau, JA 1937.656.

²⁶ The other alternants of the suffixed pronoun of the 3rd person and of some other persons need not to be mentioned here as they do not provide an argument for linguistic classification.

²⁷ Littmann, Die Partikel ma- in Harari, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 33.103–22 (1920).