፩ ፪ ፫...and, hulatt, sost

Yesterday, I overheard Sena "reading" a book to Addie as they snuggled on the recliner.  I grabbed my camera and snuck in for a photo.  As I listened to her, I realized that she was counting and guiding Addie's fingers to point to each item in the book - in Amharic!  Daddy has been teaching her numbers, as well as other words and it is cute to hear her say things like "Ebakish" (please) or "wehndem"  (brother.)

"And, hulatt...

...sost, arat, amest..."

Both of our girls are Oromo and Oromifa was the first language they were exposed to. Because Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia (and, thus, resources for learning it are more readily available than those for Oromifa), John decided to concentrate his efforts on learning Amharic so he can teach it to our girls.  Amharic is not an easy language to learn and I'm not sure John will ever be able to write it because it uses a script known as  ፊደል - not the Latin alphabet used in English and Oromifa.  He will instead focus his efforts on the spoken language and the rest of us will learn by proxy.