Amharic Language - Rastafarians

Rastafarians

The etymology of the word Rastafari actually comes from Amharic. Ras Tafari was the pre-regnal title of Haile Selassie I, composed of the Amharic words Ras (literally "Head", an Ethiopian title equivalent to duke), and Haile Selassie's pre-regnal given name, Tafari.

Many Rastafarians learn Amharic as a second language, as they consider it to be a sacred language. During the late 1960s study circles in Amharic were organized in Jamaica—a sort of Rastafarian parallel to the contemporary movement for civil rights in the United States. It was also a function of the post-colonial, Pan-African identity and Rastafarian awareness sweeping the ghetto after Haile Selassie’s 1966 visit to the island. Various reggae artists in the 70s, in the style later called roots reggae, including Ras Michael, Lincoln Thompson and Misty-in-Roots, have written songs in Amharic, thus bringing the sounds of this language to a wider audience. Especially the Abyssinians have used Amharic as sacred languages in their songs.

Satta Massagana

A notable early attempt to use Amharic in reggae was the song "Satta Massagana" by the Abyssinians, mistakenly believed to mean "Give thanks". However, this "Amharic" phrase seems to have been derived from looking in a bilingual dictionary and finding the entries säţţä for "give" (actually "he gave") and 'amässägänä for "thank" or "praise" (actually "he thanked" or "he praised"), by those unaware of the correct inflections of these verbs, the convention of always listing verbs in the past tense third person, or the pronunciation of the diacritical marks. The actual way to say "give thanks" in Amharic is only one word, misgana. Ironically, owing to the vast popularity of this song, "to satta" has even entered modern Rastafarian vocabulary as a verb meaning "to sit down and partake".