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Events 2021

April 2021

"Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Aspects of Ethiopian Languages" published
 Editor(s): Derib Ado, Almaz Wasse Gelagay and Janne Bondi Johannessen.

From the abstract: The focus of this unique publication is on Ethiopian languages and linguistics. Not only major languages such as Amharic and Oromo receive attention, but also lesser studied ones like Sezo and Nuer are dealt with. The Gurage languages, that often present a descriptive and sociolinguistic puzzle to researchers, have received ample coverage. And for the first time in the history of Ethiopian linguistics, two chapters are dedicated to descriptive studies of Ethiopian Sign Language, as well as two studies on acoustic phonetics. Topics range over a wide spectrum of issues covering the lexicon, sociolinguistics, socio-cultural aspects and micro-linguistic studies on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Ethiopian languages.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
Read more

March 2021

Kambata Speech Corpus
Kambata is included in the collection of Ethiopian speech corpora developed by the NORHED project. The corpus has almost 140 000 tokens and 69 speakers. Linguists in charge for the corpus is Dr. Derib Ado.

Amharic Speech Corpus more than doubled in size
The Amharic Speech Corpus is now more than doubled in size and has more than 154 000 tokens and 82 speakers.

There are now eight speech corpora for the following lanuages: Amharic, Gumer, Hadiyya, Hamar, Kambata, Muher, Oromo and Tigrinya. See an overview here.
 

Seven PhD students have graduated
During the project period seven project PhD students have successfully defended their PhD dissertations:

• Almaz Wasse
• Andargachew Deneke
• Awlachew Shumneka
• Emebet Bekele Birkie
• Etaferahu Hailu
• Pawlos Kassu
• Tsehay Abza Debo

Events 2020

December 2020

News about Ethiopian speech corpora
Tigrinya is included in the collection of Ethiopian speech corpora developed by the NORHED project. There are now seven speech corpora for the following lanuages: Amharic, Gumer, Hadiyya, Hamar, Muher, Oromo and Tigrinya.

Tigrinya Speech Corpus has 138 600 tokens and 45 speakers. Linguists in charge for the corpus are Dr. Derib Ado and Dr. Feda Neggese.

The Oromo Speech Corpus is expanded and has 266 500 tokens and 88 speakers. Gumer Speech Corpus is also expanded to 37 250 tokens and 22 speakers.

See an overview and search the corpora here

Closing workshop in Adama 16.—17. December
The last workshop in the Norhed project Linguistic Capacity Building — Tools for the inclusive development of Ethiopia was arranged in Adama 16.—17. December. All major Ethiopian stakeholders participated and discussed the fruits of our project.

Bulletin
Read about the project and the new Phonetics Lab in Bulletin of the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Addis Ababa University No 10, August 2020.

January 2020

Ethiopian speech corpora expanded

The NORHED project Linguistic Capacity Buliding – Tools for the inclusive development of Ethiopia has expanded the speech corpus collection. The Amharic and Oromo corpora have become much bigger, the Amharic has now nearly 72 000 tokens, Oromo has nearly 42 000. In addition the Hadiyya language has got a small speech corpus with 13 000 tokens:

• Amharic Speech Corpus 71,849 tokens, 36 speakers. Linguist: Professor Baye Yimam.
• Gumer Speech Corpus 19,000 tokens, 14 speakers. Linguist: Dr. Fekede Menuta.
• Hadiyya Speech Corpus 13,000 tokens, 40 speakers. Linguists: Dr. Shimelis Mazengia Dr. Zelealm Leyew
• Hamar Speech Corpus 16,900 tokens, 2 speakers. Linguists: Dr. Binyam Sisay and Dr. Moges Yigezu.
• Muher Speech Corpus 40,500 tokens, 8 speakers. Linguist: Dr. Ronny Meyer.
• Oromo Speech Corpus 41,997 tokens, 21 speakers. Linguists: Dr. Derib Ado and Dr. Feda Neggese.

 

Events 2019

 

September 2019

Langesund 23. - 27. September
Project seminar and Workshop on Demonstratives. Read the program.

See photos from the seminar

 

New: Hadiyya Speech Corpus

The corpus has 13000 tokens and 40 speakers.
Linguists: Dr. Shimelis Mazengia Dr. Zelealm Leyew
Search the corpus

Bulletin

Read about project events in Bulletin of the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Addis Ababa University No 9, September 2019.

August 2019

Oslo
Kjell Magne Yri publishes his Sidaama Dictionary in cooperation with Steve Pepper. The dictionary also contains a complete grammar and a short grammatical resumé. Read more and use the dictionary.
 

February 2019

Addis Ababa

1. February: Visit from University of Oslo:

Professor Unn Røyneland: Language policy and planning in Norway: a lesson for the Ethiopian context?

Professor Elizabeth Lanza: Place and mobility: contemporary globalization and the Linguistic Landscape in Ethiopia

 

Events 2018

 

September 2018

The 7th Meeting of Signed and Spoken Language Linguistics
September 28 - 30, 2018, Osaka Japan

NORHED project represented with Andargachew Deneke and Pawlos Kassu.

See more pictures.

August 2018

COLING 2018, August 20-26, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
First Workshop on Linguistic Resources for Natural Language Processing

NORHED project represented with Binyam Ephrem Seyoum.

Andargachew Mekonnen Gezmu, Binyam Ephrem Seyoum, Michael Gasser, Andreas Nürnberger: Contemporary Amharic Corpus: Automatically Morpho-Syntactically Tagged Amharic Corpus

 

Solomon Teferra Abate, Michael Melese, Martha Yifiru Tachbelie, Million Meshesha, Solomon Atinafu, Wondwossen Mulugeta, Yaregal Assabie, Hafte Abera, Binyam Ephrem, Tewodros Abebe, Wondimagegnhue Tsegaye, Amanuel Lemma, Tsegaye Andargie, Seifedin Shifaw: Parallel Corpora for bi-Directional Statistical Machine Translation for Seven Ethiopian Language Pairs 

 

End of April – mid July

Ethiopian PhD students on a research stay at the University of Oslo

The main aim of this stay was to offer the PhD candidates in the NORHED project the chance to work without disruptions on their research projects, and to talk with their Norwegian supervisors. Some of the eleven candidates combined the stay with conferences elsewhere, where they had been accepted to present papers (NACAL at  University of California, Long Beach, and at Multilingualism 2018, University of Warsaw, Poland) and a sign language summer course at DCAL, University of London. Two open seminars were held where the candidates presented their research (see below). The standard of these presentations was very good,  and on the basis of these and the talks by the senior NORHED participants at NACAL, another project book is now being planned.

June 2018

Oslo

Ethiopian PhD-students visit professor Janne Bondi Johannessen in her home at Kolsås 22. June.

See the photos

 

Oslo

MultiLing seminar on sign language and interpreting, 4. and 5. June

Read about the seminar

(Photo: Terje Heiestad / UiO)

 

    Multilingualism 2018, 9-10 June, University of Warsaw, Poland

NORHED project represented with Almaz Wasse Gelagay.
Read the program

 

NACAL conference June 1. - 3., Long Beach, California

Our LCB NORHED project is extremely well represented at this year’s NACAL conference at Long Beach, California. We are represented by: Etaferahu Tessema, Zelealem Temesgen, Feda Negesse, Derib Ado Jekale, Moges Yigezu, Tsehay Abza, Solomon Getahun Assefa, Emebet Bekele, Girma Mengistu Desta, Fekede Menuta, Shimelis Mazengia Beyene, Almaz Wasse Gelagay, Awlachew Shumneka Nurga, Melkeneh Seid, as well as two previous project coordinators Ronny Meyer and  Binyam Sisay Mendisu (UNESCO-IICBA).

Read the program

Unfortunately, not everyone got a visa to the US.

Solomon Getahun Assefa at NACAL

 

May 2018

Oslo

Seminar at the University of Oslo 28. - 29. May
Ethiopian languages: Selected topics

Read the program
 

 

LREC (11th edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference) 7-12 May 2018, Miyazaki (Japan)

NORHED project represented with Binyam Ephrem Seyoum.

 

Binyam Ephrem Seyoum, Yusuke Miyao and Baye Yimam Mekonnen: Universal Dependencies for Amharic

AmharicAndargachew, Mekonnen Gezmu, Andreas Nürnberger and Binyam Ephrem Seyoum: Portable Spelling Corrector for a Less-Resourced Language

February 2018

Addis Ababa

Sign language research workshop at University of Addis Ababa 5 – 9. of February.
Read the program

January 2018

Oslo

Project planning with project coordinator Derib Ado, Norwegian coordinator Janne Bondi Johannessen and representatives from the University of Oslo and from Norad administrations.

Friday 26 January 2018 14.00:

Guest lecture by Dr. Derib Ado at Department of Linguistic and Scandinavian studies:
Language Planning and Policy in Ethiopia: Challenges and Prospects

 

Events 2017

November 2017

Addis Ababa

Annual meting with Norad and visit from Norway

Official events during visit:

27th November 2017, Hotel Desalegn
Project meeting with Norad

Public lectures:

Wednesday 29 November 2017
OCR 119, Time: 2:00 PM, AAU

Prof. Janne Bondi Johannessen, University of Oslo:
“Pronominal case in complements of comparative particles in American heritage Norwegian: Facts and factors”

Friday 01 December 2017
OCR 119, AAU, TIme: 2:00 PM, AAU

Prof. Lutz Edzard:
"Noun patterns and compounding in Semitic"

 See photos

 

October 2017

Addis Ababa University

Workshop in lexicography and corpus linguistics 23.10 - 26.10.2017

Read the program

See pictures from the workshop

 

Five Ethiopian speech corpora

The NORHED project Linguistic Capacity Buliding – Tools for the inclusive development of Ethiopia has so far made five small speech corpora:

• Amharic Speech Corpus 25500 words, 12 informants. Linguist: Professor Baye Yimam.
• Gumer Speech Corpus 19000 words, 14 informants. Linguist: Dr. Fekede Menuta.
• Hamar Speech Corpus 16900 words, 2 informants. Linguists: Dr. Binyam Sisay and Dr. Moges Yigezu.
• Muher Speech Corpus 40500 words, 8 informants. Linguist: Dr. Ronny Meyer.
• Oromo Speech Corpus 13350 words, 3 informants. Linguists: Dr. Derib Ado and Dr. Feda Neggese.

Four Ethiopian web corpora

The HaBiT project has in cooperation with the project Linguistic Capacity Buliding – Tools for the inclusive development of Ethiopia developed web corpora for Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya:

• Corpus Amharic WaC [2013 + 2015 + 2016]
  20,287,250 tokens / 17,320,000 words
• Corpus Oromo WaC [2016]
  5,091,696 Tokens    / 4,249,953 words
• Corpus Somali WaC [2016]
  79,741,231 tokens / 71,871,585 words
• Corpus Tigrinya WaC [2016]
  2,531,443 tokens / 2,087,613 words
   

Bulletin

Read about project events in Bulletin of the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Addis Ababa University No 8, April 2017.

New publication:

Binyam Sisay Mendisu and Janne Bondi Johannessen (eds.): Multilingual Ethiopia: Read more or download

Read about the book launch March 24

February 2017, Brno, Czech Republic

Thursday 16 - Tuesday 21: HaBiT Evaluation Workshop.

Read about the workshop

 

Events 2016

November 2016, Wolkite

Friday 4th and Sunday 6th: Language Standardization in Gurage – 3rd Workshop
Read the program
See pictures from the workshop
 

September 2016, Dire Dawa

September 3: Research Workshop on Book Project
Read the program
 

June 2016

PhD Candidate attends CLIF 2016 conference in Indiana. Read the paper in Proceedings of Corpus Linguistics Fest 2016.

 

May 2016

Professor Janne Bondi Johannessen was invited to a seminar at UiO with high-ranking officials from Ethiopia, "Capacity Exchange: University of Oslo and Ethiopia"  May 13, 2016. She was asked to talk about our NORHED project, which she did with pride. The ministers were very interested and asked many questions.
More information about participants, program and photos from the seminar.
Read about the seminar on the The Faculty of Medicine webpage.

 

March 2016, Hawassa

Thursday 10th and Friday 11th:

Networking workshop at Hawassa Central Hotel.
The workshop is organized in collaboration with the Nationalities Council of SNNPR and with the presence of the Honorable Ato Lemma Gezume, Speaker of the Nationalities Council.
Read the program and see more photos from the workshop.

Saturday 12th:

Transcribers workshop at Hawassa Central Hotel.
Read the program and see more photos from the workshop.

 

Events 2015

Read about project events in Bulletin of the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Addis Ababa University No 7, November 2015.

 

November 2015

Addis Ababa University Tuesday 17. November 2015, 03.00 PM, OCR 418 Prof. Lutz Edzard,  University of Oslo: On the role of South Arabian and Ethio-Semitic within a comparative Semitic lexicographical project Semein Hotel, Addis Ababa Monday 16. November 2015: Annual meeting between the project 'Linguistic Capacity Building — Tools for the inclusive development of Ethiopia' and NORAD Read the program

Hawassa University

November 12. 2015
Prof. Elizabeth Lanza, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan University of Oslo:
Methodological Issues in Doing Research on and with Multilinguals

Prof. Jan Svennevig and Prof. Unn Røyneland, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan University of Oslo:
Language Attitudes and Negotiation of Language and Identity

 

Addis Ababa University

November 10. 2015, 2.00 PM, OCR Room 418
Prof. Elizabeth Lanza, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan University of Oslo:
Methodological Issues in Doing Research on and with Multilinguals

Prof. Jan Svennevig and Prof. Unn Røyneland, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan University of Oslo:
Language Attitudes and Negotiation of Language and Identity

 

 

October 2015

Research workshop in Bishoftu October 17-18:  Training transcribers on guidelines and software. 

 

HaBiT-meeting in Oslo September 5.-6. 2015

Read more about the HaBiT project here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project seminar in Norway September 2015

A project seminar will be arranged at Rondane høyfjellshotell in Norway September  1-4, 2015. Deadline for submitting a paper to the seminar  is July 30, 2015.

Read the seminar program. See photos from the seminar.

       (Many project participants will also attend The 19th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies in Warsaw, Poland August 24-28.)

 

University of Oslo: Visit from Addis Ababa University June 24., 2015

Read about the visit.

 

 

June/July 2015

Research Workshop where Phd candidates will present the result of their first fieldwork. Researchers will present their research findings from their field visits. Co-authored papers will be welcome.

 

Winter and spring 2015:

Capacity Building Training for local educators and authorities

	Topic of training	No of participants	Place	Tentative date	Coordinated by
	Training on lexical development, orthography and lexicography	36	Hawassa/ Sidaama Zone	February 12-14	Zelealem/ Shimelis
	Building the capacity of Ethiopian Sign Language (ESL) teachers who work in the SNNPR region	30	Hawassa	April 20-24	Pawlos/Andargachew
	Language development and standardization in Gurage.	33	Wolkite town	May 1-3	Fekede/ Ronny/Baye
	Training workshop to journalists who work in SNNPR on news writing, presentation and language use	40	Shashemene	June 26-30	Nigussie/Fekede
	Mother-tongue education	21	Shashemene	July 7-9	Moges/Binyam

 

Participation in workshops and symposium organized by local adminstrators

• 20th and 21st Annual Symposium on Sidaama language and culture (August 2014 and August 2015)

• Gurage Language Workshop (July 07, 2015) organized by Wolkite University

February 2015

 

Hawassa University

 

Graduation Hall

February 27. 2015, 3 PM

Prof. Janne Bondi Johannessen, University of Oslo:

"A Case of Incomplete Acquisition - Embedded Word Order in Heritage Scandinavian"

 

February 28. 2015, 10 AM

Prof. Janne Bondi Johannessen and Prof. Lutz Edzard,  University of Oslo:

"Coordinated clause structures in Scandinavian and Semitic involving a finite verb form and an infinitive"

 

February 28. 2015, 11 AM

Prof. Lutz Edzard, University of Oslo:

 "Verboids in Semitic in the light of modern case theory"

 

Networking workshop in Adaama February 25. - 26.

Participants from the various zone and woreda with whom the project is working.
Janne Bondi Johannessen and Lutz Edzard from University of Oslo will also participate.

Agenda: The progress of the project thus far, feedback on grass root activities, identifying additional areas of collaboration and intervention.
Read the program.and see pictures from the Adaama workshop

 

 

Events 2014

Read about project events in Bulletin of the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Addis Ababa University No 6, November 2014.

December 2014

Wednesday December 3. and Thursday December 4. 2014:
Research workshop at Semein Hotel, Addis Ababa, with PhD-students and supervisers

Read the program

 

Happenings in Oslo autumn 2014

September 30:

10:15 and 13:00: Gebre Guadie is defending his PhD: Shinasha Noun Morphology

 

 

October 1:

10:00am - 12:15pm: Dr Binyam Sisay Mendisu, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia:
Language Use on the Internet in Ethiopia: Evidence from TemariNet and Facebook

02:15pm - 04:00pm: Dr Azeb Amha, Leiden University, the Netherlands:
Interrogative and Demonstrative Verbs in Wolaitta (Omotic): linking reference and indexing

 

September 2014

More fieldwork travels in Ethiopia.
 

 

April - July 2014
 

General plan April-June 2014

Fieldwork
Twelve researchers went to the field and collected data.

Local capacity building workshops
5 local capacity building trainings are conducted:
- in Jinka and Arbamich by Omotic group (Read Report on activities of the Omotic Group)
- in Welkitie by Semitic group. (Read A Minute on the Workshop on Developments and Standardization of Guragina.)
- in Adama by Sign language group
- in Hawassa by Sociolinguistics and Communication group.

 

Read reports from:

- Field Report of the Cushitic Group
- Report from Language Technology Team
- Brief Activity Report from Ethiopian Sign Language Team
- Report on activities of the Omotic Group
- Activity Report – Semitic Group
- Brief Report by Sociolinguistic and Communication Group