English-Amharic Dictionary-Aud

The English-Amharic-English (eAe) Abridged Dictionary has 2000 Words and Phrases, more than 200 Dialogue entries. All Dialogues have audio recorded by a native Amharic speaker and all the 2000 words are read out using a simple reading engine. The use of dynamically generated audio for the Words and Phrases has enabled reducing the app size down to just 10MB.

In terms of interface, the app is designed to be easy to use and requires not too many user action. Both the 'Words and Phrases' and the ‘Dialogues’ each has tabbed view where one tab displays list of words and phrases or conversations for the selected preferences. A user can quickly switch between the two tabs and change preferences and see lists for the selected categories. So setting the translation language direction from English to Amharic or the other way round is much easier now.

The words and phrases in the dictionary are organized in two sets of categories. These category sets are identified based on their importance to the ease of learning the words and phrases in the dictionary. The category groupings are Grammatical Usage categories and Words Context categories. In the Grammatical Usage grouping, there are 13 categories; whereas, in the Words Context grouping there are 33 categories. Each word or phrase belongs to one Grammatical Usage grouping and one Word Context grouping. These categories are meant to assist the user's learning process by providing multiple ways of creating word association and memorization.

As a complement to the words and phrases, simple and context-based dialogues are included to help practice Amharic speaking. The dialogues are organized into 10 top level context categories and many sub-categories.

The dictionary is also searchable by alphabet letter, word or phrase. The search function is tied to the two major (Words and Phrase, Dialogues) sections.

As a very crucial foundation of the dictionary usage and words reading, the dictionary includes Ethiopic/Amharic letters with audio on how the sounds represented by the symbols are read. The Ethiopic characters include both regular and irregular types and all letters commonly used in Amharic are included.

More features will soon be introduced where user who buy the app can extend the dictionary from within the app interface and buy modules of specialized word and dialogues as well as other Amharic studying aids.