A is for Amharic

Colloquial Amharic David Appleyard. (London; New York : Routledge, 1995) vi, 373 p.

I don't know where I got this. There's no price tag on it, nothing written on the inside cover or first page (where the local used book sellers like to write), and no receipt or bookmark tucked into the pages. There is, however, a Cash Station receipt dated 12/15/89 which has written on it in Amharic:

እኔ:ባሃየል:ትልቅ:ፕቆር:ናኘ።
əne bahayāl tələk' pək'or nañ

which translates to "I am a giant [lit. "powerfully large"] duck." Or, at least, that's what the man who wrote it told me; I'm sure of every word except ፕቆር "?duck". He also added unbidden "He is a powerfully large duckling" and "She is a powerfully large duckling". (For some reason, both these versions contain the word ልጀ ləǰǰ "child" after ፕቆር.)

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Apropos of nothing else, my given name in Ethiopic is ዳንኤል. (The sucky thing about having a dirt-common Biblical name is, well, its dirt-commonness. The cool thing is that you seldom have difficulty figuring out how to write it in the local language; whatever it is, the Christians have gotten to it before you.)