We've recently adopted two Ethiopian children who spoke only Amharic when they first came to us. We searched for ages to find a dictionary that would suit our needs for communicating with them and also for teaching them English. After using a tiny phrasebook with limited words and only English-Amharic (one of our children could read well in Amharic) we needed a better way. And after looking through the internet for a while, a found this book and bought it. It's explained many things that before would not have been possible, and made the necessary communication all the easier. It is also helping the kids greatly in their English and understanding of things around them. Thanks heaps!

We got a maid from Ethiopia to help with our baby girl. The agency said that her English is fair, which meant it wasn't fluent but we could communicate.
However when she arrived we found that she only knows 5 or 10 English words. We both work and it was a big problem and risk to leave her with our 18 month old.
We ordered this dictionary to be able to communicate with her.
Perfect choice!

Leslau's dictionary has been the standard for years, and deservedly so. He not only has thousands of entries in each half of the dictionary (English-Amharic, Amharic-English), he also gives extensive notes on grammatical usage, such as whether an Amharic verb takes a direct object suffix, or an indirect object suffix. The entries cover a wide variety of topics: tools, holidays, body parts, etc. There are other dictionaries available, but they are very difficult to find in most countries: Dr. Amsalu Aklilu's excellent work published in Ethiopia and Ahmed Zekaria's published in India. Kane's 2 vol. Amharic- English dictionary is too expensive for most people, and has no English-Amharic section. If you need an Amharic-English-Amharic dictionary, this is a fine book. The University of California paperback edition is much, much cheaper than the hardback Harrassowitz edition from Germany, no difference in contents.