Talk:Haddis Alemayehu

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[edit] Transliteration of Amharic

It would be good to agree at some point on a fixed Wikipedia way of transliterating Amharic words, but for now, I hope we can just try for consistency. Haddis's novel is ፍቅር እስከ መቃብር, in IPA [fɨk'ɨr ɨskɐ mɐk'abɨr] and in the most common transliteration system used by linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages [fǝqǝr ǝskä mäqabǝr]. In any case, the first vowel in the second word is the same as the two vowels in the first word, so I spelled it iske.

Thank you for trying to fix it as best you can. I've occasionally tried to improve African coverage, but I'm far from an expert. I have a year's worth of classes on the subject, but the Africanist at my University was more specialized on North and West Africa. I'm interested in Ethiopia, but my reading of it of late was limited to a book by Israeli historian Nehemiah Levtzion.--T. Anthony 08:53, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem with transcribing the 6th order vowel (ə) as i is that it neutralizes the differance between the the 6th order and the 3rd order vowel (i). Using IPA ɨ is possible, but it is against the usage in the article on Amharic language. I would suggest adopting the transcription system that's in current usage by éthiopisants. yhever 16:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

ሐዲስ ዓለማየሁ's name should be written in English with a double "y", i.e. Haddis Alemayyehu. yhever 15:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, Yhever, this comes down to whether to go with an author's own transcribed spelling of his name or a real phonetic transcription. It's true that the "y" is geminated. But Alemayehu is a common name that is never in my experience written that way by Ethiopians. I think we need to discuss the whole issue of agreeing on how to write Ethiopian names (people and places) so that it can be standardized. I'm writing something on this (I'm just not sure where to post it.) -- MikeGasser (talk) 00:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that this was the way he spelled his name in English. Anyhow, since a google search of "Haddis Alemayyehu" does show up a few result I will redirect "Haddis Alemayyehu" to "Haddis Alemayehu". As for the name of his novel, I think its transcription should be changed to either Fəqər əskä mäqabər or Fɨqɨr ɨskɐ Mɐqabɨr and a translation should be given to the title ("Love unto Death" or similarly). yhever 01:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I made those changes (though I didn't much like the look of the capital schwa; maybe it should all be lowercase as you suggest). -- MikeGasser (talk) 03:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure it's ዓለማየሁ and not ዓለምአየሁ? My father's name is Alemante (alem|ante), but he writes it ዓለምአንት.

Yom 05:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Since Haddis was a language reformer who was trying to simplify Amharic writing, he writes it አለማየሁ. (In the novel he never uses the ዐ series at all.) This is not an unusual way to write the name actually, though his (father's) name also appears (confusingly) at the front of the book as ዓለማየሁ. But never as ዓለምአየሁ. -- MikeGasser (talk) 05:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The article

It's nice to see this got plenty of discussion, but it mostly seems to be about transliteration. Do any of you know anything about this person?--T. Anthony 15:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

A bit, yeah, but I have a colleague here who knows a lot (his field is Amharic literature). I'll see if we can put together something more substantial, both here and in the Amharic Wikipedia. -- MikeGasser (talk) 17:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Identical article

There's another article on Haddis Alemayehu named Addis Alemayehu. Since the other one is really short and doesn't contain any information that's not in this article, I propose to delete it and to redirect it here. yhever 06:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. -- MikeGasser (talk) 03:27, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. yhever 01:29, 28 February 2006 (UTC)