Adding on to the process of making complete thoughts and sentences, we have begun learning how to make words plural. In Ge’ez plurality is expressed by adding an affix either at the beginning of the word or at the end. There is one predominantly used suffix which is adding the “at” sound at the end of the word. For example with the word qidus which can mean holy one, qidusat means holy people. Another common way to show plurality is by using the prefix “a”. For example, the word feleg which means river can be made plural by making the word aflag. The root of the word is also altered a bit. Another example of this is hager which means country is made plural as ahgur.
Here are more examples:
Dog: kelb → kelebat
Deacon: diyaqon→ diyaqonat
Father: ab → abew
Horse: feres → afras
Donkey: adg → a’idug
House: biet → abyat (this one looks like its using both the “a” preffix and the “at” suffix)
In Amharic, the majority of pluralities are created by adding the suffix “-och” sound as in the beginning consonant of the word church.
House: biet → bietoch
Name: sim → simoch
Donkey: ahiya → ahiyawoch
In both Amharic and Ge’ez you add the possessive morpheme after the plurality one. Other uses for morphemes include specific subject pronoun indicators (written first) and case (written second). As we discussed in class, Amharic and Ge’ez are examples agglutinative languages but also use free morphemes to indicate some concepts or to emphasize them. Agglutinative language primarily use many attached morphemes. English is an example of a language that has less agglutination in comparison to other languages like German and Russian. Pronunciation wise I find that this makes it much harder to manage all the parts of the word in my mouth and often struggle especially in Amharic adding the suffixes while at the same time trying to distinguish which is the correct one to use. However, I can sometimes get away with not finishing the word properly and the message still gets across for my listener. That’s the good thing about speaking, it is composed through different means of communication like body language and facial expression that can help you send your message. However with writing, it definitely needs to be clear through spelling the idea that you are trying to convey.
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