Department of Linguistics from College of Humanities, Language Studies, Journalism and Communication (CHLSJC) of AAU, published two different books for the usage of general community reading in collaboration with

Linguistic Capacity Building Project and donated them to the Ministry of Education and Kembata Culture and Tourism Office on July1, 2021.

One of the books is an Amharic fairy tale prepared by Professor Baye Yimam which is presented to the Ministry of Education to be distributed to Regional Education Offices of Ethiopia; the other book consisting of “Kembatgna” figurative speeches, prepared by Alamu Banta, is to be accessible for schools in “Kembata”.

Amanuel Alemayehu (PhD), Dean for CHLSJC expressed that, the AAU collages are working on three main objectives; Teaching-learning, Research and Community Engagement. “Accordingly, our College is working on these objectives and nowadays, we are thriving on community engagement issues,” he added.

Derib Ado (PhD), Director for Linguistic Capacity Building Project said that the project was launched seven years ago with four members: AAU, University of Oslo, Norwegian Science and Technology University and Hawassa University.

“The main objective of the project is building the capacity of languages by doing researches on different languages, creating resource for languages, training language professionals and Educate up to the third degree in the field of linguistics. As a result, our project has graduated about 9 PhD and 12 MA students so far,” Derib said.

As Derib stated, thought the projecthad a plan to work on eight Ethiopian languages, it has got into eleven through time, collaborating with the Universities of Oslo and Masaryk.It was possible toupload on the web four of themin written text information and the rest seven in converted speechto make them accessible online, he added.

“Several educational and community-based books have been published in different languages and offered to the concerned bodies so far. The two books donated today, are the last published books on this project,” Derib confirmed.

Mr. Alamu Banta, from Kembata Cullture and Tourism Office, addressed thathis Office received two books previously written as dictionary of Kembata language and the other as a collection of poemsby the language and this is the third that the Office got under this project.

“Members of the Department of Linguistics have constantly supported us and their effort is invaluable in compiling of this book; I express our deepest gratitude for this.I think, we will work together on many other languages that exit ​​in our region,” Alemu finally said.

By: Tsion Aysheshim

Photo: Andualem Aseffa

Editor: Abraham Girmay