Habesha k'etero (Ethiopian appointment)

Waiting for my two Nara collaborators who should have been here fifty minutes ago to start working. I met the main one yesterday for the first time. It is a lovely person that is committed to help me in all possible ways to make this research a success. He speaks the Mogoreeb Nara dialect, while the second consultant can help be with Higir, Kyota and Santoorta. I am, therefore, in the ideal position to make a comparative description of all four Nara varieties. On the other hand, I must be careful not to mix the replies and make sure we are talking about this or that dialect.

I will start showing a pedagogical book for teaching Nara published by the Eritrean Ministry of education. There are words associated to images and some grammatical structures and pronouns. I plan to ask for the translation, the plural of nouns and the tones, without recording for the first day for not impressing them immediately with the technological equipment.

I need first of all to train my hear with tones. There is one H and one L, normally one H per word. But long vowels can be HL or LH with a rising or descending contour respectively and in a few cases it seems that there are also short vowels with rising and descending tone. Moreover, some sonorants can have H, such as l, r and w. There is also Sandhi phenomenon described by Hayward and me and Banti that I have to take with caution. 

10.01am and no news of my consultants and they do not reply to my messages. I am patient. They will arrive sooner or later. 

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